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. ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 
IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS 



VOL. I. 



BY - 
WILLIAM C. SPRAQUE. 



DETROIT, MICHIGAN. 
THE COLLECTOR PUBLISHING CO. 






Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1896, 

by The Collector Publishing Company, in the office 

of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



TO MY FATHER 

An honored member of the 42nd Congress, whose life of tireless 
industry and of devotion to duty has ever been an inspira- 
tion to me, this book is affectionately inscribed. 

THE AUTHOR. 



62368 



PREFACE. 

The author claims for this book no originality of design or 
matter. It has been a pleasant task for him to review the pro- 
ceedings of the early days of the 42nd Congress, of which pro- 
ceedings he was an eye witness, and to cull out from these such 
bits of oratory and debate as might prove interesting and profit- 
able to the general reader. 

The 42nd Congress numbered among its members some of the 

ablest statesmen of which our country's history can boast. The 

oratorical ability of this Congress was above the average, and 

many of the selections to be found in these pages deserve to 

take high rank among the masterpieces of American eloquence 

and debate. 

WILLIAM C. SPRAGUE. 

Detroit, Michigan, November ist, 1895. 



INDEX. 



Pa^e. 
Controversy between Hon. William D. Kelley, Hon. Henry L. 

Dawes, Hon. Benjamin F. Butler and Hon. James G. Blaine 1 

Con;mittee to investigate Southern outrages, Hon. Samuel Shella- 

barger 14 

Violence should be put down, Hon. John Sherman 17 

General Amnesty a means of pacification, Hon. John W. Stevenson.. 21 

The cause of disorder in the South, Hon. Allen G. Thurman ' 24 

Southern outrages must cease, Hon. James W. Nye 27 

The Southerner honest in his convictions, Hon. Frederick A. Saw- 
yer 37 

Mr. Butler and his friends, Hon. George W. Morgan and Hon. 

Benjamin F. Butler 42 

Aid to poor negroes in the District of Columbia, Hon. Henry 

Wilson and Hon. Allen G. Thurman 43 

President Grant and San Domingo, Hon. Charles Sumner 48 

Defense of President Grant, Hon. Frederick T. Frelinghuysen 57 

The sword of the Constitution, Hon, George P. Hoar 60 

The Southerner desires peace, Hon. Washington C. Whitthome 63 

The poverty of the South and its cause, Hon. William D. Kelley 68 

This is war, Hon. William D. Kelley 72 

The inferiority of the negro, Hon. William D. Kelley 76 

Our liberty not indestructible, Hon. Stevenson Archer 80 

In defense of North Carolina, Hon. Alfred M. Waddell 83 

In defense of the loyal men of the South, Hon. Robert B. Elliott... 87 

Enforcement of fourteenth amendment, Hon. Joseph H. Rainey 90 

Thei nation must protect her citizens, Hon. Ellis H. Roberts 95 

Tennessee invites capital, Hon. John M. Bright 100 

An appeal for magnanimity toward the South, Hon. John M. Bright 102 

A defense of the carpet-bagger, Hon. George C McKee 104 

Grant not a usurper, Hon. Benjamin F. Butler 106 

An appeal for moderation, Hon. S. S. Cox 112 

The Ku Klux a sham, Hon. W. R. Roberts 114 

An appeal for kindness, Hon. James M. Leach 118 

A typical scene in the House of Representatives during the excit- 
ing post-bellum days, Hon. Benjamin F. Butler 120 

The Republican party vindicated, Hon. Frederick T. Frelinghuj^sen 132 
Let us be magnanimous, Hon. John Edwards 136 



Pag-e, 
No annexation tolerable except northward, Hon. Justin S. Morrill.. 137 

The warning's of history, Hon. Justin S. Morrill 139 

This country a nation, Hon. Charles Sumner 144 

The agricultural department criticised, Hon. William A. Holman 146 

The surroundings of the capitol building at Washington, Hon. 

John F. Farnsworth 149 

Duty must be met, Hon. John Scott 150 

The people will yet speak, Hon. Fernando Wood 151 

Let us try kindness, Hon. John B. Storm 153 

Civil strife ever the pretext for the destruction of the liberties of 

the people, Hon, R. T. W. Duke 155 

The fiery ordeal, Hon. W. AV. Vaughan 157 

Wo want peace, Hon. P. M. B. Young 160 

A Southerner's Idea of a Carpet-Bagg-er, Hon. E. I. Golladay 162 

Give ua Amnesty, Hon. E. I. Golladay 164 

How have the mighty fallen! Hon. William Williams 166 

Democrats cry unconstitutional, Hon. William Williams 168 

Life and liberty of the citizen, Hon. C. L. Merriam -171 

A picture of slave days, Hon, C. L. Merriam 176 

Courtesy Over-Much, Hon. Roscoe Conkling, Hon. Thomas F. Bay- 
ard, Hon. Frederick T. Prelinghuysen 178 

The Republican party the friend of labor, Hon. Joseph R. Hawley.. 181 

The friend of the oppressed, Hon. Charles Sumner 183 

Amnesty as a matter of g-race, Hon. Henry Wilson 184 

The Republican party the enemy of labor, Hon. Lewis D, Campbell 185 

Labor in America not oppressed, Hon. John A. Bingham 188 

What is treason? Hon. Francis P. Blair, Jr 191 

Rhode Island's gift to the Nation, Hon. William Sprague 199 

The pantheon of America, Hon. Henry B. Anthony 202 

Roger Williams, Hon. Henry B. Anthony 204 

An eloquent prayer. Rev. Dr. DeSola 206 

The character of the Puritan, Hon. S. S. Cox.., 208 

The character of the Puritan, Hon. B. P. Butler 212 

A plea for general amnesty, Hon. George Vickers 216 




JAMES G. BLAINE. 



ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 
IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 



CONTROVERSY BETWEEN HON. WILLIAM D. KELLEY, 

OF PENNSYLVANIA, HON. HENRY L. DAWES, OF 

MASSACHUSETTS, HON. BENJAMIN F. BUTLER, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS, AND HON. JAMES 

G. BLAINE, OF MAINE. 



On March 15th, 1871, a resolution was adopted by the House of 
Representatives calling upon the Speaker to appoint a select com- 
mittee of thirteen to inquire into the condition of the late insurrec- 
tionary States so far as regards the execution of the laws and the 
safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United States. 
Qn the following day Mr. Kelley, having been appointed one of the 
committee, asked leave to be excused from serving on account of ill 
health. At the same time he called the attention of the House to a 
circular laid upon the desks of members that morning, in which it 
was charged that the adoption of the resolution and the appoint- 
ment of the committee were the result of a combination of the high 
tariff Republicans with the Democracy, and emphatically denied 
the assertion in the following language: "In the name of the in- 
dustrial interests of the country and their Representatives upon the 
floor, I make this early, earnest and honest protest against these 
false and unfounded accusations." 

Mr. Butler then arose and stated that he had made no accusa- 
tion against Mr. Kelley, closing his few remarks with the satirical 
question: "Is there any other high tariff gentleman who desires 
the floor to explain his vote?" 



2 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

A member having called the attention of Mr. Butler to the fact 
that the vote on the resolution showed that fifty-eight Republicans 
voted against the resolution, Mr. Butler said: "I understand all 
that perfectly, the resolution was sprung upon the House. Many 
of the warmest opponents of the resolution, southern men as well 
as other Republicans, voted for it because they saw from the trick 
that was played upon them that there would be no other legisla- 
tion except this in favor of the south, and they did not like to vote 
against it, so that they might not be placed in a seemingly false 
position at home. But that was not the way in which the eighty- 
four men who attended the Republican caucus, held the night be- 
fore, intended or ordered their committee to bring the matter of 
protection of southern union men before the House." 

Mr. Dawes then asked Mr. Butler what he meant by the term 
"trick." ****"! want to know what my colleague means 
by applying the term "trick" to fifty-eight of his political associates 
upon this floor who differ with fifty acting upon the same sense of 
responsibility and the same sense of duty that my colleague acts 
upon here in this House." Mr. Butler proceeded to state what he 
meant by "trick," saying: "I mean that when a man stays out of 
the caucus of the Republican party and that caucus settles a meas- 
ure, and then he comes in and undertakes to thwart that party by 
aid of the votes of our opponents whom I expected to vote, by 
offering a measure that they can support and he gets them to sup- 
port what a Republican majority cannot do, as these gentlemen 
did, that I say is a legislative trick, and I say it with a full knowl- 
edge of my responsibility. If it is not true in the judgment of the 
country, I shall fail. If it is true, then on the heads of those who 
did it be the responsibility of the laws of life, liberty and property 
of our friends, the loyal men of the south, unprotected and uncared 
for by any aid they receive from Congress when our hands are tied 
by this trick." 

After some little discussion between Mr. Dawes and Mr. Butler^ 
Mr. James A. Peters, of Maine, stated that he offered the resolution 
for the appointment of the committee. Mr. Butler asked him: 
"Did you write it?" Mr. Peters then said; "I did not write it. It 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 3 

was written by the Speaker of the House, my friend. And the 
friends of the resolution in the little time which they had went 
about the House and conferred with the distinguished gentleman 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Butler). A great many Republicans 
thought it a desirable thing as a compromise, a middle ground; that 
it ought to pass anyhow, even if other legislation was to follow it. 
It was not sprung upon the House, for all notice was given that 
could possibly be given to the friends of the resolution. It was 
shown to the gentleman" (Mr. Butler). 

In the midst of some controversy between Mr. Butler and Mr. 
Peters as to what answer Mr. Butler made when shown the resolu- 
tion and as to the character of the caucus referred to, Mr. Blaine 
(the Speaker), who had been referred to by Mr. Peters as having 
written the resolution, came upon the floor, having asked Mr. Wm. 
A. Wheeler, of New York, to take the chair. The following col- 
loquy took place: 

Mr. Blaine: I desire to ask the gentleman from Massachusetts 
(Mr. Butler) whether he denies me the right to have drawn that 
resolution? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I have made no assertion on that 
subject one way or the other. 

Mr. Blaine: Did not the gentleman distinctly know that I 
drew it? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: No, sir. 

Mr. Blaine: Did I not take it to the gentleman and read it to 
hhn? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Blaine: Did I not show him the manuscript? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Blaine: In my own handwriting? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: No, sir. 

Mr. Blaine: And at his suggestion I added these words, "and 
the expenses of said committee shall be paid from the contingent 
fund of the House of Representatives," (applause); and the fact 
that ways and means were wanted to pay the expenses was the only 
objection he made to it. 



4 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Ml. Sutler, of Massachusetts: What was the answer the gen- 
tleman made? I suppose I may ask that, now that the Speaker has 
come upon the floor. 

Mr. Blaine: The answer was that I immediately wrote the 
amendment providing for the payment of the expenses of the com- 
mittee. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: What was my answer? Was it 
not that under no circumstances would I have anything to do with 
it, being bound by the action of the caucus? 

Mr. Blaine: No, sir; the answer was that under no circum- 
stances would you serve as chairman. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Or have anything to do with the 
resolution. 

Mr. Blaine: There are two hundred and twenty-four members 
of the House of Representatives. A committee of thirteen can be 
found without the gentleman from Massachusetts being on it. His 
service is not essential to the constitution of the committee. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Why did you not find such a 
committee, then? 

Mr. Blaine: Because I knew very well that if I omitted the 
appointment of the gentleman it would be heralded throughout the 
length and breadth of the country by the claquers who have so in- 
dustriously distributed this letter this morning, that the Speaker 
had packed the committee, as the gentleman said he would, with 
'weak-kneed Republicans," who would not go into an investiga- 
tion vigorously, as he would. That was the reason. (Applause). 
So that the chair laid the responsibility upon the gentleman of de- 
clining the appointment. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I knew that was the trick of the 
chair. 

Mr. Blaine: Ah, the "trick!" We now know what the gentle- 
man meant by the word "trick." I am very glad to know that the 
"trick" was successful. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: No doubt. 

Mr. Blaine: It is this "trick" which places the gentleman from 
Massachusetts on his responsibility before the country. 



IN THE AMEKICAN CONGRESS. 5 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Exactly. 

Mr. Blaine: Wholly. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Wholly. 

Mr. Blaine: Now, sir, the gentleman from Massachusetts talks 
about the coercion by which fifty-eight Republicans were made to 
vote for the resolution. I do not know what any one of them may 
have to say; but if there be here to-day a single gentleman who has 
given to the gentleman from Massachusetts the intimation that he 
felt coerced, that he was in any way restrained from free action, let 
him get up now and speak, or "forever after hold his peace." 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Oh, yes. 

Mr. Blaine: The gentleman from Massachusetts says in his 
letter: "Having been appointed against my wishes, expressed 
both publicly and privatel}^, by the Speaker as chairman of a com- 
mittee to investigate the state of affairs in the south, ordered to-day 
by Democratic votes, against the most earnest protest of more than 
two-thirds majority of the Republicans of the House." 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Blaine: This statement is so bald and groundless that I do 
not know what reply to make to it. It is made in the face of the 
fact that on' the roll-call fifty-eight Republicans voted for the reso- 
lution, and forty-nine besides the gentleman from Massachusetts 
against it. I deny that the gentleman has the right to speak for 
any member who voted for it, unless it may be the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Maynard), who voted for it for the purpose prob- 
ably of moving a reconsideration — a very common, a very justifiable 
and proper course whenever any gentleman chooses to adopt it. I 
am not criticising it at all. But if there be any one of the fifty- 
eight gentlemen who voted for the resolution under coercion, I 
would like the gentleman from Massachusetts to designate Uim. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I am not here to retail private 
conversations. 

Mr. Blaine: Oh, no; but you will distribute throughout the 
entire country unfounded calumnies, purporting to rest upon asser- 
tions made in private conversations, which, when called for, cannot 
be verified. 



6 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Pardon me, sir. I said there 
was a caucus 

Mr. Blaine: I hope God will pardon you; but you ought not to 
ask me to do it! (Laughter.) 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I will ask God, and not you. 

Mr. Blaine: I am glad the gentleman will. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I have no favors to ask of the 
devil. And let me say that the caucus agreed upon a definite mode 
of action. 

Mr. Blaine: The caucus! Now, let me say here and now that 
the chairman of that caucus, sitting on my right, "a chevalier" in 
legislation, "sans peur et sans reproche," the gentleman from 
Michigan, (Mr. Blair), stated, as a man of honor, as he is, that he 
was bound to say officially from the chair that it was not considered 
and could not be considered binding upon gentlemen. And more 
than that. Talk about tricks! Why, the very infamy of political 
trickery never compassed a design so foolish and so wicked as to 
bring together a caucus and attempt to pledge them to the support 
of measures wliich might violate not only the political principles, 
but the religious faith of men — to the support of a bill drawn by the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Butler) which might violate 
the conscientious scruples of men. And yet, forsooth, he comes in 
here and declares that whatever a caucus may determine upon, how- 
ever hastily, however crudely, however wrongfully, you must sup- 
port it! Why, even in the worst days of the Democracy, when the 
gentleman himself was in the front rank of the worst wing of it, 
when was it ever attempted to say that a majority of a party caucus 
could bind men upon measures that involved questions of constitu- 
tional law, of personal honor, of religious scruple? 

The gentleman asked what would have been done — he asked my 
colleague (Mr. Peters) what would have been done in the case of 
members of a party voting against the caucus nominee for Speaker. 
I understood that was intended as a thrust at myself. Caucus nom- 
inations of officers have always been held as binding. But just here 
let me say that if a minority did not vote against the decision of 
the caucus that nominated me for Speaker, in my judgment, it was 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 7 

not the fault of the gentleman from Massachusetts. (Applause.) 
If the requisite number could have been found to have gone over to 
the despised Nazarenes on the opposite side, that gentleman would 
have led them as gallantly as he did the forces in the Charleston 
convention. (Renewed applause and laughter.) 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Mr. Speaker 

Mr. Blaine: I have the floor. I do not very often ask it. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Let not your conscience accuse 
you. 

Mr. Blaine: Mr. Speaker, in old times it was the ordinary 
habit of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to take part 
in debate. The custom has fallen into disuse. For one, I am very 
glad that it has. For one, I approve of the conclusion that forbids 
it. The Speaker should, with consistent fidelity to his own party, 
be the impartial administrator of the rules of the House, and a con- 
stant participation in the discussions of members would take from 
him that appearance of impartiality which it is so important to 
maintain in the rulings of the chair. But at the same time I despise 
and denounce the insolence of the gentleman from Massachusetts 
when he attempts to say that the Representative from the third 
district of the State of Maine has no right to frame a resolution; has 
no right to seek that under the rules that resolution shall be 
adopted; has no right to ask the judgment of the House upon that 
resolution. Why, even the insolence of that gentleman himself 
never reached that sublime height before. (Applause.) 

And that is the whole extent of my offending, that I wrote a 
resolution; that I took it to various gentlemen on this side of the 
House; that I said to the gentlemen on the other side of the House: 
"This is a resolution on which you cannot afford to filibuster; it is 
a resolution demanding a fair, impartial investigation, and under 
the rules I desire that this resolution may be ofifered, and my col- 
league (Mr. Peters) will offer it." And then the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Butler) telegraphs, he knows to how many 
papers through the whole United States, for doubtless his letter will 
be found in extenso wherever he could get it inserted in this morn- 
ing's journals, that this was "a legislative trick." 



8 eijOQuence and repartee 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: And I repeat it now, 

Mr. Blaine: There are certain repetitions which do not amount 
to slander; and the gentleman may repeat everything in that con- 
nection, as his colleague (Mr. Dawes) very well says, "except the 
truth." 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts, (in his seat): I did not hear my 
colleague say that. 

Mr. Blaine: The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Butler), 
in his remarkable letter, uses this language: 

"Because the very resolution which authorized the committee 
was so framed, and, in my belief, purposely, in the interests of ths 
Democratic party, that such committee cannot report, under the 
rules of the House, in the face of the Democratic opposition, and, 
by their permission, in more than a year from this time, the usual 
power not being inserted in it to report at any time." 

The gentleman from Massachusetts is a very astute lawyer; but 
it has fallen under my observation that he is extremely ignorant of 
the rules of this House. Had the resolution contained those words 
it would have been tantamount to suspending the rules, and one 
objection would have prevented its coming in. What does the res- 
olution say? That that committee shall be appointed with power to 
report in December; report from the meeting of Congress during 
the entire month of December shall be in order at any time the 
committee may wish to make report. 

Eight and a half months intervene between now and December 
for the committee's labors, and they have one full month, with the 
privilege to report at any time; and yet the gentleman says the res- 
olution was purposely so framed as to exclude the committee from 
the power to report at all. It was purposely framed to be carried 
over the gentleman's point of order. It was to avoid that point of 
order I omitted those words, presuming that if the committee got 
through their labors at the end of nine months one whole month 
at the beginning of the session would be ample in which to make 
their report. 

I am admonished by the gentlemen around me of a fact, with 
which I am myself familiar, that the power to report at any time 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 9 

does not always carry with it the exercise of that power. The gen- 
tleman himself has been chairman during the entire Congress of a 
committee empowered to report at any time on this very identical 
subject, and on other subjects committed to it; and the members of 
that committee will say whether the gentleman always exercised his 
lull power under the rules, and whether, if the power to report at 
any time had been given to that gentleman, as chairman of this 
committee, and he had accepted the appointment, he might not have 
construed it as he has construed it for nearly two years on the re- 
construction committee, to be the power to report at no time? 

Now, Mr. Speaker, nobody regrets more sincerely than I do any 
occurrence which calls me to take the floor. On questions of pro- 
priety I appeal to members on both sides of the House, and they 
will bear me witness, that the circulation of this letter in the morn- 
ing prints* its distribution throughout the land by telegraph, the 
laying it upon the desks of members, was intended to be by the 
gentleman from Massachusetts, not openly and boldly, but covertly 
— I will not use a stronger phrase — an insult to the Speaker of this 
House. As such I resent it. I denounce the letter in all its essen- 
tial statements, and in all its misstatements, and in all its mean 
inferences and meaner innuendoes. I denounce the letter as 
groundless, without justification; and the gentleman himself, I 
trust, will live to see the day when he will be ashamed of having 
written it. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: By the ancient parliamentary 
law, of which I confess my ignorance, and of which, if full knowl- 
edge of it leads to such a speech as we have just listened to, I will 
be glad to remain in ignorance, some one person shall be Speaker 
of the House, to speak for the House. Does Mr. Speaker now do 
so? The Speaker has left his place and his gavel for the first time 
for two Congresses. Was it to speak upon any great measure of 
finance? 

Mr. Blaine (the Speaker): I would like to say that the pre- 
ceding incumbent of the chair, Mr. Colfax, now Vice-President, 
left the chair to chastise the insolence of the gentleman. 



10 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I am now upon the floor. Dur- 
ing this or the last Congress for the first time has the Speaker left 
the chair. Was it to speak upon some great measure of finance, of 
revenue, of protection to the loyal people of the south, or of recon- 
struction? Have we heard his clarion voice in behalf of the great 
measures of the Republican party? No; up to this time he has 
only been speaking to the House through a wooden gavel-head 
upon a wooded box. He has now left the chair for the floor. 
Upon what great and paramount measure? None; solely to attack 
a fellow member who sat down to write a letter expressing his 
views of public duty, who was careful to draw his letter so as not 
in any way to touch the Speaker of the House, but purely and con- 
cisely to state the naked facts of his action without a word of com- 
ment or innuendo, if for no other reason, because he was aware of 
the consequences to a humble member of a quarrel or any unfriend- 
liness with the Speaker of the House. He had been made painfully 
aware of it in the last Congress and in this; and he knew the risk 
that he ran if he roused that anger. He knew the man, and he felt 
that, in the parody of language of another — 
For ways that are dark 

And tricks that are vain, 
X I name Speaker 

And that I dare maintain. 
I felt all that, I knew all that, and therefore I was scrupulous 
not to use a word in my letter that was unparliamentary or could 
give just cause of ofifense. I was aware of the new-fledged hopes 
of the highest place in the future of the Speaker, arising from the 
quarrel which has been unfortunately forced upon the Republican 
party at the other end of the Capitol, of which he is waiting to take 
advantage. I knew all that; and therefore I was careful to say no 
word. I did not say that the Speaker wrote the resolution; I did 
not know that he did; but I knew he suggested it. I appeal to the 
Speaker's fairness — no, I cannot appeal to that. I will state what I 
said when he came to my seat yesterday and showed me the resolu- 
tion and asked me to go for it, and said I should be chairman of 
the committee under it. I said: "I will be damned if I will. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 11 

(Great laughter.) I will have nothing to do with it." I am sorry 
to be obliged to use the word here— and apologize for it — but when 
asked to betray my associates with whom I had voted in caucus it 
seemed a very good one to meet the exigency. (Laughter.) . That 
was my answer; and when he read the clause containing an appro- 
priation, even I, with my ignorance of the rules, as he claims, told 
him how, if it was determined to put the resolution through, it 
would escape an objection to it to be differently worded. I did this 
because I believe that he suggested to the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Cox) to make the point of order against the bill of the 
majority of the House, which carried it over under the Speaker's 
ruling. 

Mr. Cox: Mr. Speaker, that is not true. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I did not say that it was true. I 
said I believed it at the time (laughter); and I believed it for the 
reason that I saw the Speaker go over there on the Democratic 
side of the House getting Democrats to agree to support his reso- 
lution after he had shown it to me — for he did me the favor to show 
it to me first. Then I saw him, the owner of the rich coalfields as 
he is, attempting to get Democrats to agree 

Mr. Blaine: I was in favor of the repeal of the coal tariff and 
the gentleman was not. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Oh; I say again: 
For ways that are dark 
And tricks that are vain, 

I will name Speaker , 

And that I rise to explain. (Laughter.) 

Now, sir, I say again that when I saw him engaged in that con- 
dition of things, and saw the Speaker colloquying with the Demo- 
crats, I knew very well what was to come. I knew that any point 
of order I could raise under a resolution he had contrived would 
be unavailing; and I saw his resolution, substituted for the bill of 
the majority of the Republican party, forced through by influence 
on the floor and by the Speaker's gavel at his desk by aid of Demo- 
cratic votes. I see gentlemen here, both from the north and south, 
who have told me that they were put in a very delicate position by 



12 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

this action of the Speaker in league with the opposition. So this 
resolution to appoint a Republican committee was passed. 

Now, nobody deprecates this unhappy scene on this floor more 
than I do. I felt that if I came into this House and undertook to 
make a statement of the reasons why I could not serve upon a com- 
mittee I should be accused of having brought personal matters 
into the House of Representatives, and therefore I exercised my 
right as a citizen to address a public letter in the public newspapers, 
and in pamphlet form, to my Republican associates in explanation 
of my position. I had a right so to do, and I had hoped that if 
anybody had anything to say in reply to what I had said, instead 
of forcing upon me a quarrel in this House, to the disgrace and dis- 
ruption of the Republican party, they would take the same channel 
of communication to the public that I had, which was open to them, 
especially as one of those who have arraigned me belonged to the 
press gang. (Laughter.) I replied to my friend from Pennsyl- 
vania (Mr. Kelley), using temperate and parliamentary language 
only. 

Mr. Kelley: I beg leave to interrupt the gentleman for one 
moment. I spoke not only for myself, but for the great body of 
protectionists in this House, who were wronged by the statement of 
the gentleman, as the vote will show. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Very well; I only hope that I 
have done these gentlemen wrong, because I thought that if they 
wanted to put before us salt and coal and iron, instead of drawing 
out the iron that is entering into the souls of our friends at the 
south, they were exceedingly wrong. I missed these gentlemen 
from the caucus. I have been told since that in the case of some of 
them it was because they were afraid that the tariff might be inter- 
fered with if Congress remained here, and therefore were anxious to 
adjourn. 

But all this abuse of me, this getting exceedingly wrathy by the 
Speaker against me, does no harm, and will not frighten anybody. 
It will not hurt anybody. The calling of hard names will do no 
harm to me here or in the country. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 13 

If I could have been killed by being called hard names I should 
have died long, long ago. (Laughter.) I have withstood the 
rough side of a rougher tongue than the one just wagged at me. I 
have seen abuse with more ingenuity, but not more malignity, 
launched at me. And I have survived, and shall survive long after 
the Speaker has filled the presidential chair; very long. 

Now, sir, I do not want to continue longer this disgraceful 
scene. I admit its disgrace to the House of Representatives; I 
admit its disgrace to everybody concerned in it, however unwill- 
ingly. But I call gentlemen now here to witness, lest it shall be 
said that I commenced this series of hard words here, that no un- 
parliamentary word was spoken by me until accused of "insolence," 
and every form of vituperation was launched at me. 

There is one thing more I wish to state. I have been accused 
of not reporting, "at any time," as chairman of the select Committee 
on Reconstruction. I did report this bill, as chairman of the select 
Committee of Reconstruction; and the Speaker of the House being 
against it, while it was being read at the Clerk's desk, made a rul- 
ing which allowed Mr. Wood, of New York, to introduce a joint 
resolution for the repeal of the duty on coal, thereby stopping the 
reading of the bill, which could have come up again — a ruling 
never before made in this House, and I trust never to be made 
again. 

Mr. Blaine (the Speaker): Will the gentleman state the rule? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Yes; a ruling that while the bill 
was being read anybody might interrupt that reading by a motion 
to suspend the rules. 

Mr. Blaine (the Speaker): The gentleman certainly does not 
want a serious answer. The very principia of suspending the rules 
allow it to be done when no gentleman is occupying the floor. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: A gentleman by the name of 
"The Clerk," after the bill was reported by a committee of this 
House, was occupying the floor, by reading the bill at that time; 
and the very best kind of occupancy of the floor, too, for the House 
at least had a right to hear what the bill was before he was taken 
from the floor. I do not care whether I am right or wrong upon 



14 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

the ruling. I admit my ignorance of parliamentary law; and I 
thank God I know no more about it than I do, because I see how it 
affects a man's mind who has made it a study. (Great Laughter.) 
But I do think if the Speaker had been half as anxious for the 
passage of this bill to protect the people of the south as he was for 
some land-grant measures passed from the Speaker's table at the 
last session, it would have become a law long ere this. 

Mr. Blaine (the Speaker) : Will the gentleman specify what? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Oh, pretty much all of them. 

Mr. Blaine (the Speaker) : I do not think it worth while to say 
anything more; that is simply and only a gratuitous calumny. 

In this controversy the brilliant powers of repartee, for which 
Mr. Blaine and Mr. Butler were famous, are well shown. 



SAMUEL SHELLBARGER, OF OHIO. 



(In the House of Representatives March i6th, 1871, on the occa- 
sion of his having been appointed one of the committee of thirteen 
to investigate southern outrages.) 

Mr. Speaker, I have not sought the floor for the purpose of 
prolonging this discussion. The Speaker has thought it proper, in 
the exercise of that power which he has exercised so wisely and so 
much to the gratification of every part of the country, to place me 
upon the committee of tjhirteen, which was constituted by the 
House yesterday. And it is only, sir, because I am there by your 
appointment that I desire to make a statement bearing on the mat- 
ter of the discharge of the duties to which I am consigned by that 
appointment. You have in that appointment consigned thirteen 
gentlemen of this House to duties, the right discharge of which, in 
my solemn judgment, next after the enactment of some just legisla- 
tion demanded right now for the safety of the Republic, take rank 
second. 

Why, sir, this country now has a spectacle before it which never, 
in time of peace, was seen before in the history of civilized States. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 15 

I challenge those who know most about what we were taught by 
that "reverend chronicler of the grave," to answer me, when before? 

In a time of what is called, with a strange charity, "profound 
peace," murder— unnatural, contrived, organized, banded by trea- 
sonous oaths, political murder; murder by wholesale, murder by 
day and in night time, murder of men, and of women, and of chil- 
dren; murder accompanied with its frightful train of whippings and 
burnings and robberies; murders arranged and adjusted upon a 
scale proportioned with nice design to the attainment of the set pur- 
poses of its leagued authors, to wit: The overthrow of the liberties 
of those emancipated and protected by the new amendments to the 
Constitution — stalks, almost unchallenged, through the half of the 
Republic. This fact is already proved by such evidences as ought 
to make it indisputable. 

Why, sir, a few months ago I went out of that the most beau- 
tiful, but that most profligate city of the globe, the queen of beauty 
just fallen, and as I went across the Seine I saw the people of Paris 
thronging up every street and boulevard, pressing to the "dead- 
house." There seemed to be thousands in intense agony of excite- 
ment, and I marveled what it meant. It was all because one 
French citizen, a woman, and her family had been foully murdered. 
The event startled the whole French people; and this a city, a na- 
tion, inured to the blood of revolutions and of war, as almost no 
other people is. And, sir, throughout that empire, and that conti- 
nent, too, for months it rang that a whole family in France had 
been secretly murdered, and there was no portion of that empire's 
soil which was left unvexed until justice discovered and punished 
the perpetrator. And that, sir, was France — bloody, turbulent, 
revolutionary France — but that France when she was, where we now 
deem ourselves to be, in "profound peace." 

Mr. Speaker, the reason why I say the duties to which I have 
been appointed upon this committee are of so transcendent import- 
ance is because our country is in that condition of disorder, of in- 
cipient — I was going to use that hateful word, which I hoped in 



16 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

such connections never to use again, rebellion — that we are de- 
manded by the very highest duties of American Representatives to 
undertake the work to which we are consigned by this resolution of 
yesterday. In the recent report made from the other end of your 
Capitol by a minority of a committee, the stupendous and ghastly 
fact which I assert, and which so asserts itself in this "dance of 
death" to which I have alluded, is denied, and is denied by the other 
side of this House and by a powerful party in this country. It is 
denied that this state of mischief exists or that this coming mischief 
impends. This being denied, that ought to be done which the reso- 
lution proposes shall be done, so that there shall be no doubt left, 
if indeed honest doubt can now exist. But, sir, it is because it is 
thus made eminently right that the investigations of matters so 
huge in moment as these be made so complete, the nation's knowl- 
edge of the inexpressible guilt and of the appalling danger be com- 
plete, that 1 voted that it should be made; and if men want better 
reasons than that, I have no better to give, though I have many 
others to give. 

Wisely, sir, and well, if your convictions were like mine; wisely 
and well might you exercise the rights and perform the duties of 
the Representative of the third district of Maine in indicting a reso- 
lution inviting us to so important a search as this for facts like 
these. But I had, as I said, additional reasons, but none other so 
overwhelmingly commanding as this, for voting for that resolution, 
which you drew and we adopted, which reason I will now state in 
the language of another — language already become celebrated, 
though just telegraphed to the country and also laid upon our 
tables. That reason is expressed in these words, stated, I fear, too 
strongly, yet stated, I hope, with at least a modicum of truth, that — 

"Whenever and wherever the committee would go there would 
be sunshine and peace, and we would be compelled so to report." 

And if the constitution and investigations of this committee 
shall do what the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Butler) . here 
says it will— nay, not so much as that, but only save one American 
life and stop one butchery— God knows I would vote for it from 
now until the crack of doom. 




wr 



JOHN SHERMAN. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 17 

Now, sir, it seems to me that these two reasons more than justi- 
fied, that they demanded, if your convictions were like mine, that 
you should have written the resolution. 

Another thing I wish to say, and then I close. I say it to my 
fellow Republicans. We are men, I trust, not made of brittle stuff. 
If we are, we are not fit to be the Representatives of that great 
party whose name we bear. 



VIOLENCE SHOULD BE PUT DOWN. 



EXTRACTS FROM AN ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN SHER- 
MAN, OF OHIO. 



There was before the Senate March i8th, 1871, a resolution to 
the following effect: That the Senate will consider at the present 
session no other legislative business than the deficiency bill, the con- 
current resolution for a joint committee to investigate into the con- 
dition of the States lately in insurrection, and the resolution pending 
instructing the committee on the judiciary to report a bill or bills 
that will enable the President and the courts of the United States to 
execute the laws in said States. 

I call the attention of those gentlemen who have examined the 
subject to the fact that there is no case where any crime or offense 
has been committed upon Democrats by this political organization 
Ku Klux Klan, that I know of. All have been upon one political 
party. Thus in the south, where the Republican party is mainly 
composed of a comparatively few white men and the great mass of 
the colored emancipated population, the white men are to be ter- 
rorized and the negroes are to be scourged and lashed and slaugh- 
tered. This cannot go on much longer. I tell you, gentlemen, that 
if this thing goes on, although the black race is the most humble 
and obedient that ever trod this earth of ours, as sure as fate retali- 
ation will come with fearful force. Even the worm would rise 



18 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

under such persecution. Why, sir, in England they tried to put 
down the humble and lower classes there in two or three revolu- 
tions, but it always reacted. And these scourges and outrages can- 
not continue much longer before they will produce their inevitable 
result. Then what? Do you desire a war between the white and 
the black race, and burning of barns and houses, murder and deso- 
lation ? 

Up to this hour I can say that there is no case brought to my 
attention where this organization has committed outrages on any 
Democrat, If there is, I do hope Senators will palliate this state- 
ment by showing that this same kind of outrage has been turned 
against Democrats as well as Republicans. It is the worst feature 
of this thing that it is partisan and political, that it arrays one party 
against another. The only distinction between our civilization and 
the Mexican republic is that here when the majority decide the 
minority defers, and we all stand upon the old flag. But when you 
can have one party burning and robbing, slaughtering and murder- 
ing, it will not be long before the other party, whether the majority 
or the minority, will resort to the same tactics. It is one of the 
fearful elements and dangers which always surround a republican 
government. Whenever there is a refusal to obey the laws made 
by the majority in due form, and whenever popular opinion in any 
cornmunity can override the laws, then there is no longer a republi- 
can government; it is anarchy first, and despotism afterward. 

Mr. President, there is another remarkable feature of this whole 
proceeding, and that is that from the beginning to the end in all 
this extent of territory no man has ever been convicted or punished 
for any of these offenses, not one. The only claimed exception, 
and that is pointed out by the minority report, is where three or 
four negroes undertook to disguise themselves as Ku Klux, went 
around murdering and robbing other black people; but they were 
not genuine Ku Klux. They were arrested by the authorities, tried 
and sent to the penitentiary, and are there now. 

But, sir, in all this numerous array of crime there is not one man 
called to an account for murder, robbery, scourging, whipping. 
Why, sir, it is an appalling fact. In regard to Texas, the matter 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. IQ" 

was discussed here some time ago; and now from Texas to North 
Carolina how many crimes have been committed by this Ku Klux 
Klan? And yet here is the testimony of a judge in Kentucky that 
the grand juries refuse to indict and the petit juries refuse to con- 
vict, and there is no punishment for this lawless outrage upon 
human society. 
* * * * * * * * ^ -^ 

Now, sir, here is the testimony of several of the judges of the 
highest courts of North Carolina and the testimony of one of these 
conspirators themselves, that it was impossible to convict them; 
and I say this day that as against these roaming bands of Ku Klux 
the law in North Carolina is a dead letter. They may go in 
peace and quiet, commit their outrages upon the poor, the humble, 
the feeble, in that State, and need not fear danger, punishment or 
disgrace. That is the condition of society there. And, sir, what is 
that? It is the worst form of civil war. What is civil war? It is 
where a party rises in the State with sufficient power to resist the 
authorities. That is the meaning of civil war, and I say in North 
Carolina now there is an organized band, a disguised and confed- 
erated band, with sufficient power to not only disregard the laws 
and to commit crime with impunity, but no one of them can or 
will be punished. 
*********** 

Why, Mr. President, with such an eulogium on that race, with 
such a proud and haughty boast of the domineering supremacy of 
the white race, and of the obedience and fidelity of these poor slaves, 
how is it that these people can find it in their hearts to rob and 
scourge and murder them? If it was any other race of men that 
they were dealing with they would find the tables turned quicker 
than lightning. I say, therefore, it is not exactly fair to sneer at 
these witnesses, whether negroes or office-holders. 
>********** 

I have merely answered these matters thrown into this case, and 
which I do not think have any more bearing on it than Tammany 
Hall politics or Erie Railroad corporations. We come back after 
all to the bald, naked fact that here is an organized, disguised. 



20 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

armed band of desperate and lawless men riding by day and night 
over large parts of North Carolina, destroying liberty, law and all 
safety of person and property. This is a glaring fact, and all that 
this resolution does is to allege in brief terms this fact, and refer 
the matter to the Committee on Judiciary to ponder and devise a 
remedy. I must confess that I do not myself, in the hurried mo- 
ments that I am allowed to look into this question, see a remedy in 
the law. I have no doubt a careful comparison of views and study 
of this subject and a fuller examination of the facts in all the other 
States, showing how far this organization extends, will bring out 
some solution. I only know that if the Judiciary Committee and 
this Congress can find no solution, law and liberty are dead, and 
this government of ours may as well be written upon the scroll of 
Time, its record completed. If in large proportions of the south- 
ern States this lawless violence can go on, then the people of the 
United States have not a government strong enough to carry out 
the only object of government, which is liberty, safety and law. 
And, sir, if my honorable friend from Missouri, who seems to think 
that the organization of the present government in North Carolina 
rather furnishes an excuse for these things, makes that allegation, 
let me ask him what excuse he can find for these same acts of vio- 
lence in his native State, Kentucky? 

In Kentucky there is a Democratic government, a Democratic 
Legislature; and the Louisville Courier-Journal says that appeals 
have been made to the Legislature to put down these things, and 
they have refused or neglected to do it. These gentlemen complain 
that the people of North Carolina seem to be too eager to get rail- 
roads, and they wanted railroads, and the bonds issued by the State 
in aid of railroads have been squandered or misapplied. Well, in 
Kentucky they have the same lawless violence that cannot be pun- 
ished, and not only will they not build railroads there, but they will 
not allow the City of Cincinnati to build a railroad through the 
State of Kentucky, when she offers to put $10,000,000 into it and to 

build it without any expense to that State. 
********** 



IN TELE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 21 

Now, Mr. President, I have gone over this matter cursorily, and 
I propose to leave it here. I have no desire to thrust myself into 
a political discussion, although this question does necessarily con- 
nect itself somewhat with political topics. My own conviction is 
that, but for the political organization to which I belong and the 
power it holds by virtue of the popular will, the negroes in the 
south would soon be reduced to very much the condition they were 
in before the war, and no loyal man could live in safety in the 
south. I am willing to hear this subject discussed and to fairly 
consider any proposition the Judiciary Committee can make, and I 
will not prejudice their conclusions in advance. 

But I say this Senate ought not to adjourn without recording 
its conclusion upon the testimony now laid upon their tables. 
There it is. More testimony may be required for a broader view; 
and yet, while this testimony is here we ought not to separate until 
WG have done what we can to put down the violence thus disclosed. 
In the name of civilization, outraged by these crimes; in the name 
of republican government, disgraced by them; in the name of four 
millions of negroes, emancipated by our laws; in the name of all 
the soldiers, living or dead, who fought to preserve your country, I 
invoke the full exercise of all powers of the government to punish 
these atrocities, to restore to their old prestige and power the laws 
of the land and the courts of justice, and to secure to all our citi- 
zens, white or black, wherever they may be, the protection of life 
and property. 



GENERAL AMNESTY A MEANS OF PACIFI- 
CATION. 



EXTRACTS FROM AN ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN W. 
STEVENSON, OF KENTUCKY. 



(In the United States Senate March i8th, 1871, in opposition 
to the resolution quoted in the introduction to the address of Mr. 
Sherman, last given.) 



22 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Mr. President, the protection of life, liberty and property is not 
a partisan question. It is above party. Civil liberty ceases to exist 
when the citizens of a free republic are not protected in the enjoy- 
ment of those inalienable rights. No man will go further than I in 
aiding this government, within its constitutional authority, to in- 
vestigate anywhere and everywhere these disorders. I was only 
[ained that a gentleman who has filled so conspicuously for so 
many years the distinguished positions which the honorable Sena- 
tor from Ohio has held in this government should, pending a joint 
resolution for the investigation of all these alleged outrages in 
order to arrive at the truth as to where they exist, to what extent 
they exist, should before the adoption of that resolution by both 
Houses rise in his place in the Senate and undertake, upon mere 
newspaper rumor, to hurl unfounded anathemas against so many 
gallant States in this American Union. 

Would it not have been more consistent to have waited until the 
joint committee which it is proposed to institute had gone to the 
south and brought here their report informing us of the extent of 
these disorders, where they existed, how organized, if so, by whom 
and for what purpose, and then to base his action upon such infor- 
mation, rather than make an inflammatory appeal upon ex parte 
testimony, which could have and can have no other result than to 
inflame the passions and the partisan prejudices of the people, 
when the great interests of the entire country require peace? Sir, 
does the gentleman feel, after his speech, with his hand upon his 
heart and his eye upon his God, that he is fit to sit as an impartial 
judge upon such a report with the preconceived prejudice against 
the southern States which his speech shows has already entered his 
bosom?* Sir, I have no such feeling. On the contrary, I pledge 
myself to go as far as the farthest in any constitutional investiga- 
tion for ascertaining the truth of the existence of these alleged 
disorders. The people whom I represent will shrink from, no such 
inquiry. I should spurn myself and the noble commonwealth, 
which in part I humbly represent on this floor, would spurn me if I 
could so far forget the duty I owe the whole country as to allow, 
on a question like this, mere party obligations to bind me. I am a 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 23 

party man, and I rejoice that I belong to one which has ever been 
the party of the Constitution and the Union. It is a party of law 
and order, one which has never sought to cover up or defend vio- 
lence or disorder. 
********** 

Mark my words; take them down. I repeat that whenever that 
case is investigated by a grand jury it may turn out that this wrong- 
doer is a Republican, and not a Democrat. I do not say that there 
are not bad Democrats, and I am sure that you would not say that 
there are not bad Republicans; but what I do say is, let us on 
both sides of this chamber join hands and frown down any viola- 
tion of law or any injustice that threatens the rights of the people 
anywhere; but let us not make political capital of it; do not let us 
go off on newspaper reports and attempt to fan a flame of indigna- 
tion against a gallant people, who, though unfortunate in war, laid 
down their arms with no spot on their honor, and are now vainly 
seeking to prove their loyalty to a Constitution which they vainly, 
under mistaken hopes, attempted to overthrow. Oh, rather let us 
take them by the hand and encourage the bold, gallant men who 
publicly denounced these outrages; let us show our generosity by a 
general amnesty, at least by an amnesty that will encourage them 
and get their effective agency with their power over the misguided 
young men who came from the war broken-hearted and poor; let 
us get the moral influence of their leaders to bring them back, and 
again we shall have peace; nay, more, we shall have a cordon of 
true hearts, all bent on developing the prosperity and the greatness 
and the grandeur of this Republic upon the foundation-stones 
where its founders placed it, the reserved rights of the States intact, 
with a ready acquiescence in all the powers necessary to the Fed- 
eral Government in the execution of its rights. I am quite sure 
that the proposed investigation in the southern States will remove 
the aspersions of violence attempted to be cast and now paraded 
for party ends. General amnesty and a restoration of political 
rights to all will prove the most efficacious remedy for all disorders 
and all attempted violence. 



24 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

THE CAUSE OF DISORDER IN THE SOUTH. 



EXTRACTS FROM AN ADDRESS OF HON. ALLEN G. 
THURMAN. OF OHIO. 



(In the Senate of the United States March 20th, 1871, during 
the debate growing out of the resolution for a joint committee to 
investigate southern disorders.) 

But again, sir, the Senator from Indiana says that my opposi- 
tion to this publication admits that if these offenses are committed 
there, the disclosure of the fact will injure the Democratic party. 
Why, what a remark was that! What a fair statement was that! 
Injure the Democratic party? No, sir; the Democratic party has 
been a party of law and order from its foundation. If it has any 
fanaticism at all it is a fanatical love of the Constitution and the 
institutions of the country. If it has ever stopped in the path of 
progress it is because there lay across that path the Constitution 
of the Republic. The Democratic party in favor of violence, for- 
sooth! Cannot the Senator recollect when the streets of Baltimore 
ran red with blood shed by Know-Nothing myrmidons-^the blood 
of Democrats? Cannot he recollect when houses devoted to reli- 
gion were given to the flames and women turned out in the cold 
hours of midnight because they belonged to a particular faith? 
Cannot he recollect the scenes of Louisville and of New Orleans? 
And will he tell me that this party to which I belong, and which has 
suflfered more from violence than any party that ever existed in ttie 
country, is not a party of law and of order? No, sir; it will not do. 

But these outrages thus committed are but drops in the bucket 

ompared to organized outrage in the name of law, compared to 

•rganized outrage where the military force of the government puts 

its heel, or attempts to put its heel, upon the free election of what 

is called, by courtesy, I suppose, a free country. 

Again, sir, let us leave these exciting topics and come down to 
see the matter really before us. I may have been seduced into 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 25 

speaking more at large on the subject, because paulo majora cane- 

mus; we are very apt to be seduced into speaking about that 

which is greater instead of that which is less. 

** ******** 

No, sir, you must go deeper than that. The causes that lie at 
the foundation of these difficulties are patent to any man who has 
even a superficial knowledge of history. They are patent to any 
man who will reflect for a moment. There never was a great civil 
war yet that did not, as a consequence of it, entail upon the country 
in which it occurred the presence of banditti. 

My colleague said the other day that nothing he had ever read 
in history was comparable to the outrages that were now being 
perpetrated in the South. That was the substance of his remark. 
I know my colleague is a learned man; but he must have a frail 
memory indeed, or it has been a long time since he read history, 
if that is his conclusion. Does he remember the state of Italy after 
the end of the great civil war there? Does he remember that from 
one end of that peninsula to the other the whole country was full 
of banditti? Does he remember the state of France when Napoleon 
1. was elected first consul, when it was reported to him, and 
reported upon reliable authority, that there were not less than 
forty thousand banditti in France at that time living by violence, 
living by plunder, and committing murder with impunity? Why, 
sir, it cannot be otherwise, and the most astonishing thing to the 
Am^erican people is this: that there has been so little outrage, that 
there have bec^: so few banditti, after such a great civil war as we 
have gone rL agh. 

I shall never cease to admire the American people when I think 
that millions of men who have been in arms, when the war closed 
quietly laid down their arms and resumed the occupations of peace. 
In the town in which I lived I saw fifty thousand of them honorably 
discharged from the public service; and I say it, and say it with a 
proud boast for my State — that though they were there in that city 
for days, though they were discharged and as free as I was to go 
where they pleased, they molested no man, they committed no act 
of violence, but peaceably departed to their homes. And he who 



26 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

has reflected upon it for a moment must see that, never perhaps 
since the world existed, was so great an example set of the virtue, 
the moderation, and the intelligence of a people as was displayed 
by the American people when the great armies on both sides were 
disbanded and sent to their homes. Why, sir, these outrages were 
not committed then. But there has been more crime at the North 
since the war than there ever was before, and more crime at the 
South. That could not be avoided. It was inevitable. 

Then there are other circumstances that must produce disorder. 
The people at the South had fought for a cause that they religiously 
l)elieved in, as much as we believed in the cause for which our side 
fought. They were conquered, subdued, humiliated. But then 
they believed that the war had been carried on, as we declared that 
it should be, to preserve the Constitution and restore the Union, 
and they expected that that pledge would be faithfully fylfilled. 
Instead of fulfilling it you put them down under martial law, you 
abolished their State Constitutions, you compelled them at the point 
of the bayonet to adopt other Constitutions, you set their lately 
freed slaves above them, and gave the control of State after State to 
the most ignorant, the least informed and the least interested 
portion of the community. In this very State of North Carolina I 
think it appears that the colored voters are eighty thousand. The 
vote for the Republican ticket at the last election was eighty-three 
thousand and some hundreds, and the vote for the other ticket was 
nearly eighty-eight thousand. It clearly appears that there is 
scarcely a colored man in the whole State who did not vote the 
Republican ticket. Now, what a spectacle is that! There is a 
State in which but three thousand white men can be found to join 
the Republican party; and who are they? Where do they come 
from? Where were they born? What spirit of adventure took 
them to North Carolina? Who are these three thousand white men 
who, with eighty thousand negroes, have ruled that old common- 
wealth that used to be called the firm Old North State, the very 
exemplification of order? 

In the old State, that always would vote the Whig ticket, no 
-matter though all the rest of the South voted the Democratic ticket, 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 27 

that pattern of order and law, that Quaker State of the South, but 
three thousand white men can be found to vote the Radical ticket; 
and the denomination of that party for years and years, the plunder 
of the State, the ruin of her prosperity has been the result of a 
combination of three thousand adventurers with eighty thousand 
negroes; and yet the people are expected to be as mild and as 
placid and as gentle as so many turtle doves! Oh, no, Mr. Presi- 
dent, it will not do. 

But if we are to have an investigation let us have it. And when 
•we do go into this investigation, and when it comes to be consid- 
ered by the Senate, I beg Senators to look once more at history, 
and to find that by no armed tyranny, by no treading of people 
under the heel, has order ever been restored, unless it was the order 
of despotism, the silence of its reign. No, sir; if you want the 
people of the South to be orderly, give them good government; let 
them govern themselves according to the nature and spirit of our 
free institutions; let the intelligence of the country have fair play; 
let the honesty and economy that everybody will admit existed in 
those States before the civil war, whatever faults they may have 
had, once more take place. Let mere adventurers retire to the 
background or hide themselves in the holes from which they came; 
let once more the people feel that they have a Constitution that will 
be enforced, laws that they respect; and once more you will have 
peace and order there as well as you have anywhere. 



SOUTHERN OUTRAGES MUST CEASE. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES W. 
NYE, OF NEVADA. 



(In the United States Senate, March 21st, 1871. The subject 
before the Senate was the appointment of the joint committee for 
the investigation of southern outrages.). 



28 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Now, Mr. President, these are facts. Being facts uncontra- 
dicted, the question comes up, what shall we do? Some say do 
nothing. The honorable Senator from Delaware (Mr. Bayard) 
begged us to be kind to these erring men, and reminded us of the 
terrible excitement that has been produced by the war, and won- 
dered, as did the honorable Senator from Ohio this morning, that 
greater outrages had not been committed. My answer to that way 
of doing it is that we have tried it for six long years. Sir, scarcely 
had the sound of the cannon gone from our land, and before the 
rattling of the drum marshaling the soldiers under arms had died 
away, a spirit of magnanimity, of forgiveness, of unexampled gen- 
erosity prevailed throughout this country. Sir, never since the 
plan of salvation had there been witnessed so sublime a mag- 
nanimity as was exhibited by the Republican party of this nation 
toward its offender. There was not a hearthstone but had a vacant 
place around it, not a home but had a vacant chair, and yet, in a 
spirit of a full Christian magnanimity, we said, "Father, forgive' 
them, for they know not what they did." That was the language 
of the Republican party. We wooed them with all the sweetness of 
which we were capable; we pointed to the former glory of this 
nation; we pointed to the scars that had been inflicted on the 
garments of the Goddess of Liberty, and begged of them, by all 
the glories of the past and the hopes of a still more glorious future, 
to return to their allegiance and forget that they had banded together 
for the destruction of this noble government. But, sir, as deaf as 
the adder and as blind as the mole, they would not listen; and the 
spirit that they had exhibited upon the field seemed to grow more 
malignant in repose. When we attempted here to clothe four 
millions of people among them with the rights of citizens, we were 
told what the result would be, and it has been more than realized. 
The trouble lies throughout that whole country that their education 
from their earliest infancy toward the negro race can no more be 
erased or eradicated from them than the spot could be eradicated 
from the hand of Macbeth's wife. 

Sir, I .do not understand the philosophy of this reasoning. Most 
men — wise men at least — take the condition of things as they are; 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 29 

and when the law, aye, sir, when the Constitution itself, which they 
are so fond of quoting, made these men citizens, and entitled to all 
the rights and privileges and immunities of ourselves, where is the 
logic of the reasoning that these southerners must be educated to 
receive and respect it? Sir, it is the Constitution; it is their right, 
and whatever the education of us individually may have been, we 
must accept it as a fact. 

There is not the pretense now that there was in olden times, 
that the Constitution covered and justified the degradation of the 
negro. My honored friend on my left (Mr. Sumner) will remember 
when he was arraigned upon this floor and was told that it was a 
thing unconstitutional to discuss or agitate the question of slavery. 
They say they seek repose, and the honorable Senator from Ohio 
said this morning that they were the party of order and of law. 
How was it in Kansas? It was unconstitutional for freemen to 
take possession of that soil, and in a spirit of constitutional resist- 
ance they reddened the green fields of Kansas with blood! It was 
not constitutional for freemen to live there, and they burned their 
dwellings in the night and their families escaped through the wet 
prairie grass by the lurid flames of their own habitations! It was 
not constitutional then to invade, as they called it, the territory with 
freemen. Sir, there will never be anything constitutional in their 
minds till they get possession of the helm of this government. 

Sir, if these things are to exist — I care not whether they are 
political or not — this government is at an end, for whenever the 
hour arrives that a government cannot protect its citizens, that 
moment it ceases to be a government that is entitled to respect 
from anybody. Now, sir, what means shall we take? We have 
tried law. I am in favor of trying another remedy. I would dig 
around these men, and see if we cannot enrich them with the 
principles of republican freedom ere I slew them; though their sins 
are now so flagrant, I would try them again; and this is called on 
the part of the opposition here a dominating oppression! 

Mr. President, I would that these things were not so. It is not 
only painful to me as an American citizen, but it is painful to me 
as a man, to see a record made here, to go out to all the world, that 



JO ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

our citizens are slaughtered by thousands, and that there is na 
power in the local or general government to put it down. As a 
member of this government, I repudiate that doctrine and that 
saying entirely. There is power to put it down, and if it requires 
and invokes that power that it took to put down the rebellion, let 
it be used. 

Sir, if this government has not power to put it down, I undertake 
to say, and I venture the assertion to-day that it means war, and 
war to the knife. How slow were we when they were sending the 
signals for their gatherings in the South, when the rebellion com- 
menced, to believe that war was really intended. When we were 
told that troops were gathering at Richmond we tried to solace 
ourselves with the reflection that it did not mean war; but that it 
did mean war is attested by the first crossing of arms at Bull Run. 
That it did mean war years of history more bloody than any others 
in the world's recor'ds has attested. Sir, that organization then was 
not half as complete as now. They have a trained army of hardy 
veteran soldiers that my friend from Missouri (Mr. Blair) has 
crossed swords with on many a field. They are there in arms to- 
day, and there they will lie in arms till the power of this govern- 
ment is asserted to disarm them and to put them down. 

These, Mr. President, are unpleasant things to say, but they are 
jny honest and candid conviction. Underlying all this is the hope 
of the resurrection of that fearful rebellion which we put down six 
years ago. We had better talk in plain terms about this. I tell 
you, sir, the camp fires are lighted in a number of these States, and 
these men who are now disguised, if the bugle sounds in a foreign 
war, will be ready to be the allies of the foreign power. And yet 
we are told by the honorable Senators on the other side that this 
thing will pass away. It was four years after the surrender of Lee 
that these organizations were complete, and instead of passing 
away, they are gathering strength every day we live. 

We are told that all that has been done is only the slaughter of 
a few colored men. And my friend from Delaware yesterday pic- 
tured the youthful faces of the men who had been wronged by 
Colonel Kirk in North Carolina. He drew a picture so beautiful 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 31 

that if Hogarth could have sketched it it would have been his 
immortal piece. (Laughter.). They were two white boys who- 
were hanged to make them confess. I think Kirk was wrong in 
that. I, with my two friends on the committee representing the 
minority, think he did wrong. But here are ten killed in a night,, 
and the excuse is that it is the result of the fevered excitement that 
yet lingers upon the memory of the old rebellion. 

Sir, there it will linger if not stopped, till enough of the colored 
race have been slaughtered and driven from their homes to make a 
majority for the Democracy certain in this nation. Oh, sir, how 
they longed for the flesh-pots! Like weaning lambs they are rub- 
bing their ears against defenses between themselves and power, so 
hungry that they must feed on blood to a triumph. Do not be in 
a hurry, gentlemen. If you attempt to succeed in this nefarious 
way, as God reigns you will be beaten worse than you were. Is 
it so important that the Democracy get power that hecatombs of 
bones of slaughtered colored men must be seen all around us? In 
the name of God, what did the Democracy do for us before the war 
and during it that entitles them to this harvest at such a sacrifice? 
They sat back as sullen as a sullen mule in harness, and said that 
they did not think there was going to be much of a shower; and 
when our soldiers were walking to their arm pits in blood they 
declared that the restoration of the Union was an object that never 
could be reached. But with that abiding faith with which a sense 
of freedom clothes men, we did succeed, but never with the appro- 
bation of the Democracy as a party. I say nothing as to indi- 
viduals, and I would that the party could have a lucid interval, as 
had some of their individual members. 

This, then, is the plain statement of facts: that at whatever 
sacrifice, at whatever costs of blood and treasure it may be necessary 
to expend, power they must have, though they take the freedmen 
who are yet clothed in their swaddling clothes of freedom, to build 
a bridge across the chasm between them and power. 

We shall do well, Mr. President, if we look this question fair 
in the face. To avert this terrible climax I would apply the cor- 
rective now. To save our country from another desolating war I 



32 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

would nip this new rebellion in its infancy. Whether that course 
be wise or not let the history of the past determine. If Mr. 
Buchanan had put two men-of-war in the harbor of Charleston when 
the secession convention met, and told them that he would blow 
that city to ashes if that convention did not immediately dissolve 
and go home, the rebellion would have been postponed. But, sir, 
with that same kind care that the Democracy always seems to have 
for those who are wrong, they hugged the delusive hope to their 
bosom that those men would not do much harm. It was that timid 
policy of Mr. Buchanan's administration that drenched this country 
in blood. Sir, had old General Jackson been at the helm he would 
have strangled the monster in its birth; but it was that effeminacy 
which then pervaded the councils of the nation, calling it by no 
harsher name, that deluged this country in blood. 

Sir, what is our duty now? Every principle of manhood and 
every principle of humanity demand that the power of this govern- 
ment should stop this indiscriminate and wholesale slaughter. 
There is not a breeze that comes from the South but what is 
freighted with the cry of murder. From the western sides of the 
Mississippi clear around the South every day the papers are filled 
with wrongs and outrages which curdle the blood of humanity. 
And yet we are told that all the remedies must be mild, and we 
must wait until the now apparent or temporary insanity of the South 
passes away. But, sir, if it must be gorged with more blood, I 
say stop it now. 

Mr. President, there is a consideration in this that reaches far 
above any party view. With parties, my friend from Ohio and 
myself will soon be done, and it will be a matter of but little im- 
portance to him or me what party shall succeed. But, sir, there is 
something in the performance of duty, as another has said far more 
able than I, that is with us through life, with us in the hour of 
death, and with us in the day of judgment. Sir, the American 
Senate sit here to-day with their ears saluted with the cry of murder; 
and yet as unmoved are the Democracy as though it was the cry 
of an alleluia. Sir, a sound of the scourger's lash is heard in our 
ears; and yet we seem to be satisfied if it is not upon our own 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 33 

bodies. The muscle twinges and the nerves twinge, as sensitively 
in a colored man as in myself. Every blow that is struck at a 
Republican's back or a Democrat's awakens a resounding echo in 
my heart. We are Senators, guardians of the people's rights, pro- 
tectors of their liberties, and what protection do we give? The 
protection that vultures give to the lamb. To-day ten men are 
murdered; our nerves are momentarily stirred; they settle down 
with a calm composure till shocked again to-morrow morning with 
the news of twenty more. 

Sir, I want to inquire, how voracious is the maw of Democracy? 
When will it be satisfied with this human suffering, with this human 
woe? How many more do you demand shall be offered up before 
we can awake an echo in your hearts to respond to the call of suf' 
fering humanity? Sir, others may do as they choose, but as for me 
I will stay here and put forth eVery energy until the most stringent 
law which the Constitution will permit is made to save my fellow- 
men from these intolerable sufferings. 

Some limid men say, "If you legislate, you may injure the Re- 
publican party." Away with such considerations! If I knew it 
would doom the Republican party to eternal oblivion, I could never 
sit here in my seat and hear silently and without action these appeals 
for protection from the poor, maimed, and scourged victims of this 
wrong and outrage. Is there anything necessarily in the principles 
'of Democracy that should make the heart callous? Is there, I 
inquire, anything so desirable in power as to lead you to step to it 
over the bones and mangled bodies of our fellow-citizens? 

Sir, especially is it right for the Republican Senators here to 
legislate on this subject. Our hearts have been warmed, I trust, 
with a little of the glowing genial influences of republican liberty. 
We have had our triumphs, and they stand recorded by archangels. 
They are the triumphs of freedom. The lash has given place to 
persuasion; the school-book has been substituted for flogging; and 
while now this infant population are struggling in the A B C of 
-freedom, whose glimpses are but dim compared with ours, where 
is the Republican upon whose brow is recorded these mighty 



34 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

achievements, that will hesitate to do what is necessary to per- 
petuate these glorious victories? Who trembles at this danger? 
The same God who took us through this fiery ordeal and battle's 
confusion will stand by us now. 

I know that the waves of political commotion are rolling moun- 
tain high; yet on their troubled bosom I cast my frail bark, and I 
hear, amid the din and confusion, "that still small voice," saying, 
"be not afraid; it is right." Why do men hesitate, and why do we 
array party against party while the signals of human distress are 
around us as thick as the news we receive? 

We are told that if we act it will be said that the Republican 
party govern with an iron rod. Aye, sir, that is easily said; but 
their iron rod has been to give liberty to the slave; their iron rod 
has been to give protection to the emancipated; their iron rod 
has been to give protection to all that large portion of southern 
people who were trodden down under the heel of the old slave- 
masters. We are told, too, that this is oppressive. Sir, it may be 
offensive to some, but oppression is a term that cannot be applied 
to it. 

Mr. President, it is sometimes said that I am a little too im- 
pulsive. That, undoubtedly, may be true; but I thank God my 
impulses all run in that direction. I would rather be condemned 
for sins of commission than omission. When my fellow's rights 
are in the scale, write me down then if you please, Mr. President, 
as one that is over-zealous in the defense of every American citizen. 

What, sir, has it come to this! An American citizen whipped, 
and by whom? By the foes that he scattered like chaff before the 
wind on the field of battle. Has it come to this, that the bones of 
the dead must be taken from Arlington to give rebels a chance to 
kick the bones of those they dared not look at when they lived? 
American citizens whipped, and by whom? By rebel soldiers; by 
men that this same oppression, as they term it, spread out protec- 
tion over as a cloud, protecting them in all their rights, till to-day 
there is scarcely a man marked for having belonged to that re- 
bellion. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 35 

Sir, will the American Senate long debate this question? Has 
it come to this, that American citizens are whipped like dogs; 
whipped by cowards that go under the guise of masks, and whiten 
themselves like ghosts to do their work of murder; and yet the 
American Senate sit here quietly and unmoved amid this terrible 
convulsion and upheaving? Sir, go with me for a moment to the 
lowly cabin in North Carolina described by that most intelligent 
though ignorant, colored man; I think his name was Holt. He 
tells the story in a simple way, but he tells the story truly, and 
upon his back are the marks of the scourger's lash. He stood in 
his own house, rallying around that humble place called home; it 
was the home of his wife, the home of his children, the home of 
his boyhood, the home of his riper years. He was taken from it 
in the dead hour of the night by disguised ruffians, disguised 
cowards, and not only lashed, but shot five times through his 
person. Go read the lessons from that lowly cabin. His children 
hid under the loose flooring in his cabin, and his wife with her 
anxiety was looking upon him as she supposed for the last time. 
Sir, bottle up all the tears that were found in that lowly cabin, and 
with them mingle the blood of that father, and see if that will not 
move even the compassion of the Democrats of this body. Sir, I 
cannot draw the picture as it is, but you yourself (Mr. Pomeroy in 
the chair) can imagine, having lived in a territory subject to this 
rule, some of the terrible, galling apprehensions and anxieties that 
haunt the minds of these people. 

Mr, President, I love this country and her institutions. I love 
them more than for anything else because they give freedom to 
every human being. I love this country and her institutions be- 
cause she promises and can give protection to her humblest citizen. 
But, sir, my love for this country and her institutions will grow 
beautifully less, and I shall be covered with shame, if this govern- 
ment acknowledges its impotency to put down these terrible 
wrongs. Sir, we may fail in this; it may be that we may have 
bitter waters of affliction yet to travel through, and in which we 
are to be tried; but we shall all be better satisfied with ourselves if 



3G ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

we can say, "To avoid and punish these things we have done what 
we could." 

Mr. President, I promised to be brief. I have given but a bird's 
eye view of the situation, leaving it to the chairman of our com- 
mittee (Mr. Scott), to complete. I would not have said one word, 
but I could not leave without entering here publicly my protest 
against any acknowledgement of the impotency of this government 
to put down this spirit. Sir, I would try the courts. Ah! what a 
mockery have they become where men perjured in advance are to 
fill your jury-box, and perjured witnesses in advance are to swear 
the rights of the poor away! Courts have become a mockery; and 
yet we are told here by wise men and great men that we should 
wait and let reason have time to assume her throne. Sir, I have 
'.waited and waited until my ears have been pained with these 
reports, and things grow worse. Why mock her, then, with justice 
and break her sword before you unsheathe it? Why hold out to me 
the protection of a court when perjury has mastered the tribunal, 
and judges, pure in themselves, six in number, acknowledge that the 
administration of the law cannot be had. 

What can you expect under such circumstances? Go summon 
the jurors that whipped this poor colored man of whom I speak. 
Would they condemn themselves? Never. Go count the witnesses 
who are ready to prove an alibi, always the rascal's refuge. Then 
talk to me of justice and the courts! Why hold out to me the fruit 
that turns to ashes as my lips near it? Why, when the very 
atmosphere is filled with murder, seek to solace ourselves with this 
poor, impotent subterfuge? Sir, I would try the courts in all their 
phases; and if they would not do, I would try the musket with its 
power. The government that will not unsheath the sword to 
protect its citizens is unworthy the support of any man. It should 
be the last resort; but when it comes, it should be as terrible as 
armies are terrible. Better that this republican sun should set in 
blood than to rise as a delusion of the hopes that it ushered in. 
Every blow that is struck upon the back of an American citizen 
should cause this body to throb with anguish. This is the heart 
and hearthstone of our country, and I appeal to Senators, I appeal 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 37 

with the cry of murder from their fellow-citizens slain in cold blood, 
to come up manfully to the duty, adopt the most stringent law that 
the Constitution will permit, and try that. 

Sir, if nothing but power will stop it, let it be the power of the 
law or the power of the sword. It must be stopped. How, think 
you, Mr. President, it reads in foreign countries when they open 
our papers in the morning to read that the victims, sixty or 
hundreds, as in Louisiana, were massacred yesterday, and yet the 
American Congress sat tamely down as stupid to all human appear- 
ance as stupidity itself. Sir, I appeal to Republicans with more 
confidence than I do to the Democracy — of course I appeal to 
them — whether they will stop half way in this work of regeneration. 
No, sir; let us stand here till the cry of murder shall cease, let us 
stand here and ward off to the best of our ability until the sound 
of the lash shall die away. Let us stand here and legislate between 
them and the wrong-doers until every cabin shall be quiet and 
peaceable, and every man, black and white, shall sit down under 
this broad tree of American protection with no one to harm him 
or make him afraid. 



THE SOUTHERNER HONEST IN HIS 
CONVICTIONS. 



HON. FREDERin: A. SAWYER, OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 



(In the Senate, March 21, 1891.) 
Mr. President, I hope the amendment I offer will be adopted. 
I think the true interests of the country demand that a law should 
be passed relieving from political disabilities all classes on whom 
they now rest. I believe it will remove one of the obstacles in the 
way of a restoration of the harmony between the different sections 
of the nation. I sincerely believe that its enactment at the time 
when the first reconstruction measures were adopted would have 
spared us the record on the pages of our history of some, at least. 



38: • ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

of those tales of horror which come on every breeze from the South, 
atid' which lead to doubt and distrust of the adequacy of our recon- 
struction policy. 

The so-called "test oath," now happily removed from our statute 
books, so far as it applies to our southern fellow-citizens, in con- 
nection with the third section of the fourteenth amendment to the 
Constitution, erected a barrier between different classes of citizens 
which held in a compact body, whose lines were rarely broken, 
nine-tenths of the intelligent white men of the South Few were 
willing to leave the ranks of those thus marked with a common 
brand, and cross those lines into the camp of a party which volun- 
tarily raised this wall of separation, and proposed to continue and 
defend it. To do so brought discredit upon almost every man who 
ventured to ask at the hands of Congress relief from disabilities 
which rested on his fellows equally with himself. It was regarded 
as desertion; not from the cause for which the southern people 
fought so bravely for four years, but from the penalties which had 
resulted from that contest to all who engaged in it, and which 
penalties having been incurred in common for a common course 
of conduct, should be borne in common, until a common relief was 
granted. 

It was held to be a confession that pardon was needed for par- 
ticipation in a cause which the mass of the southern people had 
espoused because they believed it right. This was a confession they 
were not willing to make; nay, are not willing to make. Most 
southern men had been educated in the doctrines of State rights 
pushed to their extreme, and their adoption of the right of secession 
was but the natural corollary. For more than a generation — at the 
fireside, in the school room, in the pulpit, and in the forum — this 
poison had been infused into every stratum of society. They read 
the Constitution of the United States by a light thrown upon it by 
the brilliant sophistry of a thousand southern statesmen, and to 
them that instrument was as unlike the Constitution seen by the 
disciple of Webster and his great associates in the north as was 
the shield of gold seen by the knight in the story from that of 
silver seen by his fellow, who stood on the other side. From this 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 39 

standpoint, neither the Federalist nor the secessionist could see the 
fundamental law as the other saw it. One was wrong; perhaps 
neither absolutely right. Certainly both thought and believed they 
were right. 

I take not into the account the shrewd demagogue and trickster 
who had, possibly, no convictions, no faith, no principles, but who 
was ready and ripe for revolution, let it take what form it would, 
so that he might prosper. I am now speaking of the great mass 
of the people. And I insist that however unsound the reasoning 
which led them to secession, rebellion and war, they were honest 
in entering upon the struggle, honest in its continuance, and to-day 
honestly believe they did right. Events have proved that they 
blundered; but they do not admit that a blunder is of necessity a 
crime. They are not penitent; penitence implies consciousness of 
guilt. They cannot say they are penitent without baseness and 
falsehood. Look not, therefore, for a declaration of penitence 
except from those whom you will not care to trust, with or without 
such declarations. Discard the idea that the masses of those who 
fought our armies for four long, weary years, will ever tell their 
children that they fought in a cause they believed to be a bad one. 
Reject the notion that relief from political disabilities shall come 
only when its subjects declare themselves to have been slaves to 
masters they despised but dared not disobey, unless you mean to 
deny such relief entirely. 

There may be men in the South who are willing to purchase 
offices of trust and emolument by such confessions; but they are 
not, in general, the men whose arms were bared in a conflict which 
shook the continent and came so near burying the hopes of civil 
liberty amid the ruins of our noble republic. They are not the 
men to whom you must look in the present or in the future for the 
resuscitation of the forces of civilization in the South. No! The 
bone and sinew of southern manhood went into the rebellion with 
an upright heart, with a clear conscience, and they are not now 
ashamed of the blows they struck. Here and there a man stood 
out in bold relief as an exception to the rule, and called the acts 
of secession crimes, as well as blunders. Here and there some 



40 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

nature, less susceptible to surrounding influences than the multitude, 
clung with honest love to the union of the States and looked with 
pious affection upon its starry emblem. All honor to those who 
did sol Gratitude should well forth from every loyal heart toward 
those who, in the dark days, stood by the Union we love — the Con- 
stitution we venerate, the institutions we think freighted with 
humanity's best interests. But while we hold it to be one of the 
highest praises to which one can lay claim, that he stood manfully 
by what we believe was the right in the late contest, while we 
would leave a record of loyalty to our children and our children's 
children, as a priceless legacy, let us not unnecessarily keep open 
the wounds which the terrible struggle has left by imputations of 
a want of fidelity to conscientious convictions on the part of those 
who have not this legacy to leave behind them. 

We won the cause in the last and highest court. Every issue 
was decided in our favor. Let us give up calling the vanquished 
by names which re-arouse in men's hearts the passions it is the 
interest of peace and good government and civilization, should be 
stilled and forever put to sleep. Bate not one jot or tittle of effort 
to secure the results aimed at by the prosecuti'on of the war, but, 
for God's sake, forego senseless clamor which does evil and evil 
continually, but adds naught to the security of our institutions or 
the peace of any portion of our people. 

Now, Mr. President, I am not one of those who consider the 
late gigantic rebellion as a trifling difference of opinion, I hold 
not lightly the great issues which were at stake in that contest. I 
believed in 1861, as I believe in 1871, that wisdom demanded of 
every American a strict adhesion to the national government; that 
that government could justly call upon every patriotic citizen 
to devote his whole energies to preserve the national integrity; 
that enlightened patriotism would see but one path to walk in; that 
the trust imposed upon us by the fathers of the republic must be 
sacredly kept, and that every heart must beat, every step must 
march to the music of the Union; that no matter how sincere the 
faith of the southern people in their cause, how firm soever their 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 41 

trust in its justice, truly intelligent patriotism demanded the over- 
throw of every force which stood in the way of complete national 
victory. 

Error is none the less to be resisted and overcome because it is 
honestly cherished. A bad cause is none the less to be overthrown 
because its adherents believe it to be a good one. Slavery is none 
the less to be detested because there are those who, seduced by its 
blandishments, believe it a beneficent institution. To me the rebel- 
lion was hateful. As a rebel no man had, or has, my sympathy. 
But because to me the rebellion was hateful, I do not see the 
necessity of imputing to the rebel crimes of which he had no con- 
sciousness. Because he saw his duty in a different line from that 
which it seemed incumbent on me to pursue, I do not see the 
necessity of supposing that he was false to his own conscience. 
History is full of examples of men laboring, struggling, dying in 
support of causes condemned by the common judgment; yet no one 
has doubted their honesty or good faith. Are the men of the 
South so far beneath the average standards of fidelity to convic- 
tions as to permit us to throw over their errors of judgment, their 
deeds of folly, nay, even over the crimes they committed in the 
hours of overmastering passion, no mantle of charity? 

The war ended years ago. The armies of the rebellion surren- 
dered to those of the Union. The cause of the rebellion was lost. 
Its advocates admitted the triumph of the Union. They abandoned,, 
in terms and in fact, the issues they had made. They acknowledged 
the cause decided against them by the last arbiter. They aban- 
doned the dreams of their youth, their manhood, and their old age. 
They ceased to regard the question whether their rendering of the 
Constitution or ours was abstractly right as an open one. The 
provisions of the national charter had been interpreted amid the 
gleam of sword-blades, the roar of cannon, the rattle of musketry, 
on a thousand fields. The decision had been sealed by the blood 
of a million men; no court was competent to reverse or overrule 
a judgment illustrated and ratified by the agonies of multitudes 
of widows and orphans, by the wails of fathers, mothers, sisters,, 
and brothers, all over the land. The men who to-day should 



42 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

express the hope or the expectation that the present century would 
witness a serious attempt to controvert the positions established 
by the war would meet the derision of every sane man who lifted 
his arm for the success of the confederacy. The sole cause which 
bound the southern people together almost as one man in the 
rebellion has been removed. The cause removed, the passions, the 
prejudices, interests, and sympathies which surrounded and envel- 
oped it will surely die out. Time is the great assuager of griefs, 
the great destroyer of prejudices, the great cooler of passions, the 
great solvent of heterogeneous and antagonistic elements. Time 
is the great physician upon whom we must rely for the removal 
of most of the diseases which exist in political society in the South. 



MR. BUTLER AND HIS FRIENDS. 



(A sharp tilt between George W. Morgan, of Ohio, and Hon. 
Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, in the House of Represen- 
tatives, March 23rd, 1871.) 

Mr. Morgan: Allow me a moment. I may, perhaps, have 
misunderstood the gentleman. I understood the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Butler) to say that the bill which he introduced 
and asked to have referred to a committee met the approval of a 
majority of the Republicans on this floor. Am I right? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I will restate what I said, so 
that there shall be no mistake. I understand that the bill which I 
presented, and which is ia print, does meet the approval of a 
majority of the Republicans on this floor. That it is perfect no- 
body dreams of claiming. Everything human is imperfect; every- 
thing human needs amendment, and nothing more and nobody 
more than my friends on the other side, except, perhaps, my bill. 

Mr. Niblack: One moment. The gentleman will relieve us on 
this side of the House from some embarrassment if he will cease to 
call us his friends. (Laughter.) 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Ah! 




HENRY WILSON. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 45 

Mr. Niblack: We never recognize such relations. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: There was a time when the 
Democratic party recognized me as a friend, aye, and as a leader; 
and they were very cross when I left them. (Laughter.) And, as a 
friend near me suggests, they have not got over it yet, but have 
been mad with me ever since. (Laughter.) 

Mr. Morgan: How many of us followed the gentleman, when 
at the Charleston convention he voted more than fifty times for 
Jefiferson Davis for President of the United States? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Certainly, I then voted for the 
representative man of the Democracy. Subsequent events have 
proved that the difference between the gentleman and myself is that 
he would not vote for Jefif. Davis then but would now, and I did 
then and would not now. (Laughter.) There is no trouble about 
understanding this matter at all. 

Mr. Morgan: If the choice was between the member from 
Massachusetts and the gentleman from Mississippi, the country 
would certainly justify me in making such a choice. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Will the gentleman repeat his 
statement? There is so much confusion here that I did not hear 
him. (After a pause.) I repeated my words for the gentleman 
when he did not hear me. Is he ashamed to repeat his? I did 
not hear him. (After another pause.) Then I will grant him the 
mercy of my silence as to what I did not hear. 



AID TO POOR NEGROES IN THE DISTRICT OF 
COLUMBIA. 



(Controversy between Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, and 
Hon. Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, in the United States Senate, 
March 24th, 1871.) 

Mr. Wilson: I am sorry that every time an act of justice, of 
humanity, of simple charity even, comes up, in which colored men 
are in any way concerned, our motives are questioned and our 



44 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

views misconstrued on the floor of the Senate. Our motives were 
questioned last year without cause; they are questioned again this 
. year without cause. There is not a particle of evidence to show 
that the appropriation made last year had anything to do, or has 
ever had anything to do, with the elections; nor is there the slightest 
reason to suspect anything of the sort in regard to this small 
appropriation. It is to be put into the care of some of the noblest 
persons that ever touched this earth; persons who have given 
years of toil for the poor and the lowly; persons who have visited 
the homes of distress and sickness and death; persons who have 
gone into the country and begged during the last few years tens 
of thousands of dollars to keep the souls and bodies of these poor 
waifs together. There is not a particle of evidence, I say, to show 
that this money in any way, the most remote, can have 
anything to do with elections that are soon to occur here. Sir, 
who are these persons that are in need? They are mostly old men 
and old women who have given their youth, their middle age, their 
vitality, their powers, to others. The labor of their lives has been 
unrequited and unrewarded, and in their old age they are cast upon 
the cold charities of a world they toiled to make better. These 
people came mostly from Maryland and Virginia and other portions 
of the country into this district in a time of civil war. Many of 
this class have sickened and suffered and died during the last three 
months while we have been sitting here; and those who have been 
laboring for them and begging for them all winter have seen them 
sicken and die. 

I have letters in my possession from some of the best persons 
I have ever known, persons who, to my knowledge, have given their 
powers, day and night, for the last seven or eight years, to the 
good of others. I say I have letters from such persons assuring me 
on unmistakable evidence that some of these people have actually 
died of want in sight of this Capitol. There is no doubt that some 
of these poor people have died of want and neglect, and hundreds 
of others would have died in the same way if it had not been for 
those who have been watching over and caring for them. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 45 

Sir, this is an act of mere humanity, an act of charity. These 
poor people are here. They have helped to earn the wealth of the 
nation. They were robbed and plundered for years out of their 
labor and the fruits of their labor; and now in their old age, when 
they are soon to sink into their graves, I think it is the duty of this 
Christian nation to lighten their pathway. I do hope this appro- 
priation of a small sum of money to keep these poor people from 
suffering from starvation will be made. If more is asked next 
year, let us give it. 

I hope, however, that the new government which we have pro- 
vided for the District of Columbia will be better than the one we 
have had heretofore; for I think the District of Columbia for two 
generations has been the most neglected, if not the worst governed, 
part of the country. I hope they will establish a system by which 
the poor will be cared for; but until that is done, I hope the nation 
will not see these poor people perish. I hope those who are toiling 
for them, without stint and without reward, will be aided in their 
work of charity and humanity by the generosity of the nation. 

Mr. Thurman: I wish to say a few more words, and shall not 
detain the Senate long on this subject. The Senator from Massa- 
chusetts who last spoke (Mr. Wilson) I think ought to return 
thanks to me for getting up a little debate on this subject, because 
it has enabled him to make his anti-slavery speech, which he has 
given us, I think, about twenty times the short time that I have 
been a member of this body. It is a beautiful speech. It is a 
speech that is very much calculated to strike the sympathies of 
men, and very much calculated to arouse their indignation against 
the injustice of slavery. There was danger that that speech might 
go into oblivion unless something could be done by some Demo- 
crat to afford an opportunity to make it again. 

Now, sir, the Senator says that these people are people who 
have worn out their lives toiling for others, and been deprived of 
their rights. Does not the Senator know that before the bugle of 
war ever sounded there were more free colored persons in the 
District of Columbia than there were slaves? What right has he 
to say that all the persons to whom this charity is to go are persons 



46 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

who were slaves and who were refugees here from Maryland or 
from the Southern States? He has no authority to say any such 
thing. If that is the case, if he puts it on that ground, why does 
he not limit the amendment to such cases? Why does he not limit 
the relief to the cases of refugees? Will he do that? No, sir, he 
will not do that; he is too good a man to do that; he has too much 
heart to do that. He is not willing I am sure, or if he is, I am not 
willing, that our charity shall be measured by the fact whether a 
man was a refugee or was not a refugee. But if he puts it upon 
that, as creating a moral obligation upon the government to provide 
for these men because they were refugees or because they had been 
slaves, then his logic requires of him that he shall limit his bounty 
to that class of persons; but he does not ask any such thing. The 
amendment provides for no such thing. I only want to show him 
where his logic will carry him, where his premises will take him; 
that if he puts it upon the ground of our moral obligation toward 
those people, who were once slaves, who, in his language, have 
toiled away their lives for the benefit of others, he is bound to 
have this amendment so modified that it shall apply only to that 
class of persons; but he will not do that. 

The Senator says that the District of Columbia has been the 
worst governed country, if I understand him, that he is acquainted 
with, or some such remark as that. I think it is but little more 
than a year ago that he pronounced a eulogy, in the very debate 
on this subject, upon the government of this District of Columbia, 
or at least the government of Washington city, and told us how he 
had seen it so much worse than it now was, and pronounced 
something very much like a eulogy upon its government under 
the transcendent merits of its then mayor, Mr. Bowen; but now 
it is the worst governed country he has any acquaintance with! 

Again, he tells us that he is assured that people have died from 
starvation in this city of Washington, in sight of the Capitol, within 
a short time. I do not believe one word of it; and it will take far 
stronger evidence than any man's ipse dixit to make me believe one 
wofd of it. No, sir; the American people are not a people to let 
others die of starvation in their midst. He cannot show me any 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 47 

place in this whole republic where a person dies of hunger if his 
wants are known — not one. It is a pretty story to go abroad to 
the country and the world that here, in the capital of the nation, 
the people are so barbarous, so hard-hearted, that they let each 
other die of starvation. Who were they that died of starvation — 
white or black? If they were black, and if the whites of this 
District were such brutal people, people of such hard and iron 
natures, that they would not extend the hand of charity to colored 
persons, why did not the colored persons of this District keep 
them from dying of starvation? Walk up the avenue any Sunday, 
walk along the streets any gala day or holiday, and you find them 
filled with colored persons in purple and fine linen, better dressed 
than the members of this body, carrying as much evidence of pros- 
perity as the members of this body carry in their personal appear- 
ance. You see them riding in carriages driven by white men. You 
see them parading the streets dressed as if they were going to a 
court presentation. You meet them with gold spectacles and gold- 
headed canes. You find every evidence of prosperity and more 
than prosperity among them. Are they so hard-hearted that they 
let these poor old men and women of their own race, who have 
such demands on their sympathy, who have suffered from the vices 
of the institution of slavery, die of starvation? Sir, such a thing 
is a libel. Whoever made that statement to the Senator from 
Massachusetts, it is a libel on the people of this District, both white 
and colored. 

Mr. Wilson: Mr. President, so long as the Senator from Ohio 
and myself remain here I shall be under the necessity of often 
repeating a little anti-slavery speech to him. I had hoped that it 
would not be necessary to make anti-slavery speeches to proclaim 
anti-slavery doctrines any longer, but I find that Senators, like the 
Senator from Ohio, need a little anti-slavery teaching very often. 
So long as the Senator and his political associates manifest the 
spirit that they so often exhibit, either myself or other Senators 
will be under the necessity of giving them a little anti-slavery 
instruction. They require line upon line, and precept upon precept. 
I intend to perform the task imposed upon us by their needs, and 



48 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

hope they will be patient and pardon the repetitions of anti-slavery 
truths. 

Sir, the Senator says these persons are not all refugees. I know 
they are not; but I tell the Senator that I have some little knowledge 
of this matter. I have given some little attention during the last 
seven or eight years to the condition of these poor people; I have 
used the little influence I possessed at home and in other places 
to secure something for them, to aid them in their sufferings. I 
have tried to persuade others to aid them, and I assure the Senator 
that the great body of these people are those who have come into 
the District within a few years. Some few of them are old slaves 
who were born here, some few of them are old freemen, but the 
great body of them are the freedmen who came here during and 
since the war. 

I have seen tender, touching letters written by persons whose 
names are honored wherever spoken, persons of the largest intelli- 
gence and broadest philanthropy, who have stated that in some 
cases death was occasioned by want. The Senator from New 
Hampshire before me (Mr. Patterson) has a letter referring to a 
special case, written by one of the ablest women of our country. 

Sir, there are sufferings here; there is want; there is need of aid. 
Let us give it. 



PRESIDENT GRANT AND SAN DOMINGO. 

) 

CHARLES SUMNER, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



(The following extracts are from one of the most famous 
speeches in the history of the United States Senate. It was deliv- 
ered by Charles Sumner, from his seat in the Senate, on March 
27th, 1871. Mr. Sumner had long been one of the most prominent, 
if not the most prominent, Republican in the United States. This 
speech was a severe arraignment of President Grant, whose admin- 
istration Mr. Sumner had ceased to support. In his quarrel with 



IX THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 49 

the policy of the Republican party he was followed by other prom- 
inent Republicans, such as Carl Schurz, of Missouri, Horace 
Greeley and Charles Francis Adams. The opposition led to the 
formation of the Liberal Republican party which afterward nom- 
inated Horace Greeley for President, but which in the triumphant 
re-election of President Grant, had a short life.) 

Mr. Sumner: Mr. President, entering again upon this discus- 
sion, I perform a duty which cannot be avoided. I wish it were 
otherwise, but duty is a taskmaster to be obeyed. On evidence 
now before the Senate, it is plain that the navy of the United 
States, acting under orders from Washington, has been engaged 
in measures of violence, and of belligerent intervention, being war, 
without the authority of Congress. An act of war without the 
authority of Congress is no common event. This is the simplest 
statement of the case. The whole business is aggravated when it 
is considered that the declared object of this violence is the acquisi- 
tion of foreign territory, being half an island in the Caribbean Sea; 
and still further, that this violence has been employed, first, to prop 
and maintain a weak ruler, himself a usurper, upholding him in 
power that he might sell his country; and, secondly, it has been 
employed to menace the Black Republic of Hayti. 

Such a case cannot pass without inquiry. It is too grave for 
silence. For the sake of the navy, which has been the agent, for 
the sake of the administration under which the navy acted, for the 
sake of Republican institutions which suffer when the great 
republic makes itself a pattern of violence, and for the sake of the 
Republican party, which cannot afford to become responsible for 
such conduct, the case must be examined on the facts and the law, 
and also in the light of precedent, so far as precedent holds its 
torch. When I speak for Republican institutions, it is because I 
would not have our great example weakened before the world and 
our good name tarnished. And when I speak for the Republican 
party, it is because from the beginning I have been the faithful 
servant of that party, and aspire to see it strong and triumphant. 
But beyond all these considerations is the commanding rule of 
justice, VN^hich cannot be disobeyed with impunity. 



50 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

The question which I present is very simple. It is not, whether 
the acquisition of the Island of San Domingo, in whole or in part, 
with a population foreign in origin, language, and institutions, 
is desirable; but whether we are justified in the means employed to 
accomplish this acquisition. The question is essentially preliminary 
in character and entirely independent of the main question. On the 
main question there may be difference of opinion — some thinking 
the acquisition desirable and others not desirable; some anxious 
for empire or at least a sanitarium in the tropics, and others more 
anxious for a black republic, where the African race shall show 
an example of self-government, by which the whole race may be 
uplifted; some thinking of gold mines, salt mountains, hogsheads 
of sugar, bags of coffee, and boxes of cigars; others thinking more 
of what we owe to the African race. But whatever the difference 
of opinion on the main question, the evidence now before us shows 
too clearly that means have been employed which cannot be justi- 
fied. And this is the question to which I now ask the attention of 
the Senate. 

Violence begets violence, and that in San Domingo naturally 
extended. It is with nations as with individuals — once stepped in, 
they go forward. The harsh menace by which the independence 
of the black republic was rudely assailed came next. It was another 
stage in belligerent intervention. As these things were unfolded, 
I felt that I could not hesitate. Here was a shocking wrong. It 
must be arrested; and to this end I have labored in good faith. 
If I am earnest, it is because I cannot see a wrong done without 
seeking to arrest it. Especially am I moved if this wrong be done 
to the weak and humble. Then, by the efforts of my life and the 
commission I have received from Massachusetts, am I vowed to 
do what I can for the protection and elevation of the African race. 
If I can help them, I will; if I can save them from outrage, I must. 
And never before was the occasion more imminent than now. 

I speak only according to unquestionable reason and .the instincts 
of the human heart, when I assert that a contract for the cession 
of territory must be fair and without suspicion of overawing force. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 51 

Nobody can doubt this rule, whether for individuals or nations. 
And where one party is more powerful than another, it becomes 
more imperative. Especially must it be sacred with a republic, 
for it is nothing but the mandate of justice. The rule is general in 
its application; nay, more, it is a part of universal law, common to 
all municipal systems and to international law. Any departure 
from this requirement makes negotiation for the time impossible. 
Plainly there can be no cession of territory, and especially no sur- 
render of national independence, except as the result of war, so 
long as hostile cannon are frowning. The first step in negotiation 
must be the withdrawal of all force, coercive or mandatory. 
********** 

War, sir, is the saddest chapter of history. It is known as the 
last reason of kings. Alas! that it should ever be the reason of a 
republic. "There can be no such thing, my lords, as a little war,*' 
was the exclamation of the Duke of Wellington, which I heard 
from his own lips, as he protested against what to some seemed 
petty. Gathering all the vigor of his venerable form, the warrior, 
seasoned in a hundred fights, cried out, and all within the sound 
of his voice felt the testimony. The reason is obvious. War, 
whether great or little, whether on the fields of France or the Island 
of San Domingo, is war, over which hovers not only death, but 
every demon of wrath. Nor is war merely conflict on a chosen 
field; it is force employed by one nation against another, or in the 
affairs of another, as in the' direct menace to Hayti and the inter- 
meddling between Baez and Cabral. There may be war without 
battle. Hercules conquered by manifest strength the moment he 
appeared on the ground, so that his club rested unused. And so 
our navy has thus far conquered without a shot; but its presence 
in the waters of Hayti and Dominica was war. 

**** * * J|cj)c4t* 

In other days it was said that the best government is where an 
injury to a single citizen is resented as an injury to the whole State. 
Here was an American citizen, declared by our representative to 
be an "innocent man," and already pardoned for the crimes falsely 
alleged against him, incarcerated, or, according to the polite term of 



52 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

the Minister of Baez, compelled to a "prolonged sojourn," in order 
to assure the consummation of the plot for the acceptance of the 
treaty, or, in the words of Cazneau, "to serve and protect negotia- 
tions in which our President (Grant) was so deeply interested." 
The cry, "I am an American citizen," was nothing to Baez — nothing 
to Cazneau — nothing to Babcock. The young missionary heard 
the cry and answered not. Annexion was in peril. Annexion 
could not stand the testimony of Mr. Hatch, who would write in 
New York papers. Therefore was he doomed to a prison. Here, 
again, I forbear details, though at each point they testify. And^yet 
the great republic, instead of spurning at once the heartless usurper, 
who trampled on the liberty of an American citizen, and spurning 
the ill-omened treaty which required this sacrifice, continued to 
lend his strong arm in the maintenance of the trampler, while with 
unexampled assiduity it pressed the treaty upon a reluctant Senate. 

International law is to nations what the National Constitution 
is to our coequal States; it is the rule by which they are governed. 
As among us every State, and also every citizen has an interest in 
upholding the National Constitution, so has every nation and also 
every citizen an interest in upholding international law. As well 
disobey the former as the latter. You cannot do so in either case 
without disturbing the foundations of peace and tranquility. To 
insist upon the recognition of international law is to uphold civiliza- 
tion in one of its essential securities. To vindicate international 
law is a constant duty which is most eminent according to the rights 
in jeopardy. 

Foremost among admitted principles of international law is the 
axiom, that all nations are equal, without distinction of population, 
size, or power. Nor does international law know any distinction 
of color. As a natural consequence, whatever is the rule for one 
is the rule for all; nor can we do to a thinly-peopled, small, weak, 
or black nation what we would not do to a populous, large, strong, 
or white nation; nor what that nation might not do to us. Do 
unto others as you would have them do unto you, is the plain law 
for all nations, as for all men. The equality of nations is the first 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 53 

principle of international law, as the equality of men is the first 
principle in our Declaration of Independence, and you may as well 
assail the one as the other. As all men are equal before the law, 
so are all nations. 

This simple statement is enough; but since this commanding 
principle has been practically set aside in the operations of our 
navy, I proceed to show how it is illustrated by the authorities. 
***** * * *** 

Thus does each authority reflect the other, while the whole 

together present the equality of nations as a guiding principle not 

to be neglected or dishonored. 

***** * * *** 

Applying these principles to existing facts already set forth, it is 
easy to see that the belligerent intervention of the United States in 
the internal affairs of Dominica, maintaining the usurper Baez in 
power, especially against Cabral, was contrary to acknowledged 
principle of international law, and, that the belligerent intervention 
between Dominica and Hayti was of the same character. Imagine 
our navy playing the fantastic tricks on the coast of France which 
it played on the coasts of St. Domingo, and then still further, 
imagine it entering the ports of France as it entered the ports of 
Hayti, and you will see how utterly indefensible was its conduct. 
In the capital of Hayti it committed an act of war, hardly less 
flagrant than that of England at the bombardment of Copenhagen.- 
Happily blood was not shed, but there was an act of war. Here I 
refer to the authorities already cited and challenge contradiction. 

To vindicate these things, whether in Dominica or in Hayti, 
you must discard all acknowledged principles of international law, 
and join those, who, regardless of rights, rely upon arms. Grotius 
reminds us of Achilles, as described by Horace: 

"Rights he spurns, 
As things not made for him, claims all by arms." 

And he quotes Lucien also, who shows a soldier exclaiming: 
"Now peace and law, I bid you both farewell." 

The old Antigonus, who, when beseiging a city, laughed at a^ 
man who brought him a dissertation on justice, and Pomp^y, who 



54 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

exclaimed, "Am I when in arms to think of the laws?" These seem 
to be the models for our government on the coasts of St. Domingo, 
The same spirit which set at defiance great principles of inter- 
national law, installing force instead, is equally manifest in disregard 
of the Constitution of the United States, and here one of its most 
distinctive principles is struck down. By the Constitution it is 
solemnly announced, that to Congress is given the power "to declare 
war." This allotment of power was made only after much consid- 
eration and in obedience to those popular rights consecrated by the 
American revolution. In England and in all other monarchies at 
the time, this power was the exclusive prerogative of the crown, so 
that war was justly called the last reason of kings. The framers 
of our Constitution naturally refused to vest this kingly prerogative 
in the President. Kings were rejected in substance as in name. 
The one-man-power was set aside and this kingly prerogative 
placed under the safeguard of the people, as represented in that 
highest form of national life, an act of Congress. No other pro- 
vision in the Constitution is more distinctive or more worthy of 
veneration. I do not go too far when I call it an essential element 
of republican institutions, happily discovered by our fathers. 

• • But this distinct principle of our Constitution and new-found 
sa:feguard of popular rights has been set at naught by the President, 
or rather, in rushing to the goal of his desires, he has overleaped 
it, as if it were stubble. 

Mr. President, as I draw to a close, allow me to repeat the very 
dee^i regret with which I make this exposure. Most gladly would I 
avoid it. Controversy, especially at my time of life, has no attrac- 
tion for me; but I have been reared in the school of duty, and, now 
as of old, I cannot see wrong without trying to arrest it. I plead 
now, as I have often pleaded before, for justice and peace. 

Beside the essential equity of such submission, and the moral 
dignity it would confer upon the republic, which rises when it 
stoops to law, there are two other reasons of irresistible force at 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 55 

this moment. I need not remind you that the Senate is now 
occupied in considering how to suppress lawlessness within our 
own borders and to save the African race from outrage. Surely 
our efforts at home must be awakened by the drama we are now 
playing abroad. Pray, sir, with what face can we insist upon 
obedience to law and respect for the African race, while we are 
openly engaged in lawlessness on the coasts of St. Domingo and 
outrage upon the African race represented by the black republic? 
How can we expect to put down the Ku Klux at the South, when 
we set in motion another Ku Klux kindred in constant insubordin- 
ation to law and Constitution? Differing in object, the two are 
identified in this insubordination. One strikes at national life and 
the other at individual life, while both strike at the African race. 
One molests a people, the other a community. Lawlessness is the 
common element. But it is difficult to see how we can condemn 
with proper, whole-hearted reprobation, our own domestic Ku 
Klux with its fearful outrages, while the President puts himself at 
the head of a powerful and costly Ku Klux operating abroad in 
defiance of international law and the Constitution of the United 
States. These are questions which I ask with sorrow, and only 
in obedience to that truth which is the requirement of this debate; 
nor should I do otherwise than fail in justice to the occasion if I 
did not declare my unhesitating conviction, that, had the President 
been so inspired as to bestow upon the protection of southern 
Unionists, white and black, one-half, nay, sir, one-quarter of the 
time, money, zeal, will, personal attention, personal effort, and per- 
sonal intercession, which he has bestowed on his attempt to main- 
tain half an island in the Caribbean Sea, our southern Ku Klux 
would have existed in name only, while tranquility reigned every- 
where within our borders. 

Another reason for retracting the false steps already taken will 
be found in our duty to the African race, of whom there are four 
million within our borders, recognized as equal before the law. To 
these new-found fellow-citizens, once degraded and trampled down, 
are we bound by every sentiment of justice; nor can we see their 



56 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

race dishonored anywhere, through our misconduct. How vain are 
professions in their behalf, if we set the example of outrage? How 
vain to expect their sympathy and co-operation in the support of 
the National Government, if the President, by his own mere wilU 
and in the plentitude of kingly prerogative, can strike at the inde- 
pendence of the black republic, and degrade it in the family of 
nations? All this is a thousand times wrong. It is a thousand 
times impolitic also, for it teaches the African race that they are 
only victims for sacrifice. 

Now, sir, as I desire the suppression of the Ku Klux, wherever 
it shows itself, and as I seek the elevation of the African race, I 
insist that the presidential scheme, which installs a new form of Ku 
Klux on the coasts of St. Domingo, and which at the same time 
insults the African race, represented in the black republic, shall be 
arrested. I now speak against that Ku Klux on the coast of St. 
Domingo, of which the President is at the head, and I speak also 
for the African race which the President has trampled down. Is 
there any Senator in earnest against the Ku Klux? Let him arrest 
it on the coast of St. Domingo. Is there any Senator ready at all 
times to seek the elevation of the African race? Here is the occa- 
sion for his best efforts. 
***** * * *** 

These questions I state only. Meanwhile, to my mind there is 
something better than belligerent intervention and acts of war with 
the menace of absorption at untold cost of treasure. It is a sincere 
and humane effort on our part, in the spirit of peace, to reconcile 
Hayti and Dominica, and to establish tranquility throughout the 
island. Let this be attempted and our republic will become an 
example worthy of its name and of the civilization which it repre- 
sents, while republican institutions have new glory. The blessings 
of good men will attend such an effort; nor can the smile of Heaven 
be wanting. 

And may we not justly expect the President to unite in such 
a measure of peace and good will? He that ruleth his spirit is 
greater than he that taketh a city, and so the President, ruling his 
spirit in subjection to the humane principles of international law 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 57 

and the Constitution of his country, will be greater than if he had 
taken all the islands of the sea. 



DEFENSE OF PRESIDENT GRANT. 



FREDERICK T. FRELINGHUYSEN. 



(Remarks delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 
28th, 1871, in reply to speech of Charles Sumner of the day pre- 
vious.) 

Mr. Frelinghuysen: Mr. President, I made an efifort at the 
close of the speech of the Senator from Massachusetts to obtain 
the floor, and did not succeed. I am glad it was so, not only 
because the occasion has been better improved by the Senator from 
Wisconsin, but because I feel that I should, under the warmth and 
excitement which the denunciation of my country and of her de- 
liverer created in my breast, have possibly said some things which 
would not have commended themselves to my cooler judgment. 
Yesterday, however, I should have obeyed the command, "Be angry 
and sin not;" to-day I shall respect the injunction, "Let not the 
sun go down upon your wrath." I believe I am not one of those 
who can sleep and nurse wrath, who can fold it in my arms and let 
the sun rise and set upon it, in sickness and in health, from 
January to ^V-^rch, each day giving it greater vigor, and drawing 
from my v( iry some missile of malign reproach; and I do not 

envy the pleasure of one who has that spirit for his companion. 

I said, sir, that I was warm under the denunciation of my 
country; and has not the nation been unjustly denounced? If the 
statements from the Senator from Massachusetts be true, then for 
months, yes, for more than a year, this proud nation has been 
playing the bully against a feeble neighboring republic which the 
world's oppressed race has attempted to rear in one of the islands 
of the sea, and that, too, in a manner that would have been too 
cowardly to manifest toward England or France, and in violation 



58 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

of the laws of justice and humanity. If the Senator be correct, 
then the President, his Cabinet, the House of Representatives, and 
the Senate are all guilty, and the Senator from Massachusetts 
stands in peerless purity amid a bankruptcy of patriotism and of 
love for national honor. 

I said the Senator had denounced the deliverer of my country, 
and has he not? Where is the warm-hearted lover of his country 
who does not feel that General Grant, as the instrument of God, 
brought us deliverance? He saved my hearthstone from desola- 
tion, he has perpetrated to my children an inheritance more 
precious than any that I hope to leave them. From the inmost 
recesses of an honest heart I am grateful to him and honor him. 
Yes, and in thousands and tens of thousands of homes at the 
North and West and East, where the father still grieves that his 
son has gone from him forever, where the young wife still wears the 
weeds of sorrow, where the mother hears in the sighing of the 
trees the death-cry of her boy, this reverence and love for the name 
of the nation's deliverer is a living passion. He brought victory 
to our arms where many others had failed. In Virginia we saw 
him manifest an appreciation of the value of this republic to us, to 
our posterity, and to the world, that few others possessed. He saw 
regiment after regiment swept away; he saw patriot blood flow in 
rivulets at his feet. One having less appreciation of the value of 
the stake would have faltered, would have hesitated, would have 
said: "In the sight of Heaven I dare not go further." But he, 
appreciating the value of that for which he contended, gave the 
<:ommand, "March on; I take the responsibility;" and there mani- 
fested a greatness in comparison with which that patriotism and 
philanthrophy which begin and end in sound and noise and rhetoric 
are puerile and contemptible. 

And, Mr. President, when the war was over the Republicans 
found themselves disappointed in their leader, and for four years it 
was to General Grant that millions looked, and not in vain, for 
security to their dear and blood-bought rights. Look over your 
statute books, and you will find that every matter of discretion, the 
entire execution of the reconstruction measures of Congress was 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 59 

referred to the general of the army; and yet he, sir, is the man who, 
the country is told by the Senator, is seeking to trample under foot 
the colored race of the world! And when the question came 
whether the credit and faith, and consequently the honor, of the 
republic would be preserved by the payment of our debt in money, 
or should be abandoned by adopting the illusion of paying one 
promise with another promise, he was the bearer of the standard 
around which the people gathered to preserve the honor of the 
republic, without the maintenance of which the nation would not 
have been worth preserving. 

Mr. President, this is the man who, we are told by the Senator 
from Massachusetts, is seeking to subvert the Constitution of his 
country; this is the man of whom it is more than hinted that he 
seeks to assume kingly power; this is the man who he charges that 
in dealing with a feeble neighboring republic is not only a Ku Klux, 
but is the prince and king of the Ku Klux Klan! If there is any 
point of disrespect to "the powers that be," or to the leader of a 
party that has honored and adulated the Senator, beyond that which 
this invective has reached, I trust it may never be found. 

Stripped of all vituperative adjective, what is the accusation? 
It is simply this: The President of the United States, pending 
negotiations with the existing government of Dominica for the 
annexation of that territory, if such annexation should meet the 
approval of the people of Dominica, sent a fleet to preserve the 
peace between Hayti and Dominica. The "moral effect" — a term 
which was ridiculed yesterday — the moral efifect of the presence of 
our fleet was that which it was expected to be; not a gun was fired, 
not a drop of blood was shed, and peace was preserved. Hayti 
has made no complaint, and will never know the great wrong that 
she has suffered until the speech of the Senator is sent to her. The 
Senator, I am happy to say, stands alone in his denunciation. I 
have heard the leaders of the Democratic party condemn, as they 
have a right to, Republican principles, and criticise the administra- 
tion; but I never heard one of them speak with disrespect of the 
great general who led the rank and file, consisting of Republicans 
and Democrats, on to victory and to the rescue of the republic. 



60 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

THE SWORD OF THE CONSTITUTION. 



GEORGE R HOAR, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



(Extract from an address delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, March 29th, 1871.) 

From many States, from large and distant spaces of our terri- 
tory, in every issue of the press, by every pulsation of the telegraph, 
comes up to us the complaint that large numbers of our fellow- 
citizens are deprived of the enjoyment of the fundamental rights of 
citizens. That their lives are not secure; that their property does 
not receive the equal protection of the law; that their homes are 
not safe; that they are in imminent danger of death, and of torture 
and outrage worse than death. If anything could add to the gravity 
and solemnity of these representations it is the further statement 
that these citizens so murdered, outraged or outlawed, suffer all 
this because of their attachment to their country, their loyalty to 
its flag, or because their opinions on questions of public interest 
coincide with those of a majority of the American people. Surely 
the time has come to explore the arsenal of constitutional power 
and see if it contain any sword which may avenge or any shield 
which may protect those for whose protection and benefit we have 
been entrusted with the powers of government. 

I propose to ask the attention of the House to a brief considera- 
tion of the relation of the American Constitution to the fundamental 
civil rights of the citizen. I have long been of opinion, an opinion 
adopted in times of quiet, after much conscientious study, that 
it was the great and leading purpose of the framers of our Consti- 
tution to place the fundamental civil rights of the people under 
the protection of the strongest and supremest power known to our 
laws, the power of the general government. While they meant to 
leave all matters of local policy to the State governments, they did 
not mean that any lesser authority should impair, or any failure or 
neglect be permitted to imperil the rights which they deemed the 
fundamental, essential rights of human nature itself. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 61 

But before discussing the provisions of the Constitution, let 
me call attention to one most important aid in its interpretation. 
Twelve years before the same men who made the Constitution set 
forth in the Declaration of Independence their assertion of the 
fundamental rights of human nature. They not only declared them, 
but they declared that to secure them, "governments were instituted 
among men;" and not only that, but when under any form of gov- 
ernment these ends were destroyed, it was the right of the people 
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new governments and 
provide new safeguards. 

Now, I do not pretend that the Declaration of Independence is 
a grant of power. But I maintain that when these men asserted 
that governments are institutftfi among men for certain ends, that 
the failure to secure them is a just cause for the overthrow of any 
government; that when they fought out an eight years' war on that 
issue, pledging to its maintenance life, fortune, and honor, it cannot 
be believed that when they came to set up their own government 
they established one which did not secure those ends and which, 
therefore, by their own showing, ought instantly to be overthrown. 
The Declaration is the sublime interpreter of the Constitution. 
Over every line, syllable, and letter of the Constitution the Declara- 
tion of the Independence sheds its flaming torch light. To secure 
these rights, equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, this 
government was instituted among men. The power of the execu- 
tive, the power of the judiciary, the power of the Legislature, all 
these are conferred, and conferred only, to secure these rights. 
Between the lines, gleaming through the page where all these 
powers are found, are the words, "and this power is conferred to 
secure these rights." 

This was no new doctrine. The princit)le of equality was new, 
so far as regards its public assertion by any people. But the others 
were old as Magna Charta, they were old as the principles of the 
common law. 

There came into my possession in my youth a copy of Lord 
Coke's Second Institute, which had belonged to James Otis, and 



02 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

which contained his autograph. On examining it I found certain 
passages underscored. For the purpose of this great argument in 
the case of the writs of assistance, where he dealt with all the 
fundamental questions of government and civil liberty, that great 
Isaiah of the revolution had marked in this book, which he held in 
his hand when he made the argument, one passage among others. 

It is the passage where Lord Coke asserts that Magna Charta 
is not a new grant of right, but the declaration of the old funda- 
mental common-law privileges of Englishmen. Magna Charta 
enumerates especially the rights, all now involved at the South, of 
life, personal security, and private property. So, Sir William 
Blackstone, in several passages which I have before me, asserts, 
distinctly and positively, that the right to life, liberty, and property, 
are rights which the government owes to the citizen, and if the 
citizen fail to receive from the government, his obligation to allegi- 
ance is gone. 

The preamble to our Constitution also, Mr. Speaker, in no 
doubtful language declares the same principle. I have heard it 
stated by able and clear-headed men that the framers of the Con- 
stitution assumed that the State governments would secure to the 
citizens these fundamental civil rights, and that it was not their 
purpose to deal with them in forming the national Union, that that 
Union was for purposes of commerce. Now let the Constitution 
itself answer: 

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more 
perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide 
for the common defense, promote the general welfare, to secure 
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain 
and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." 

Now I concede that this preamble to the Constitution contains 
no grant of power; it authorizes Congress to secure the blessings 
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity only by the means which 
the Constitution itself provides; but, sir, in construing the powers 
affirmatively granted, you must do it remembering the preamble 
sets forth what those powers were intended to accomplish, and any 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 63 

limitation of those powers short of that accomplishment is contra- 
dicted by the preamble itself. We ordain and establish this Consti- 
tution, say the fathers, in order thereby that justice may be 
established, in order thereby that the general welfare may be pro- 
moted, in order thereby that the blessings of liberty may be secured 
to ourselves and our posterity. Now, who shall dare so limit the 
powers conferred by that instrument as to say that under it any 
lesser authority exists which may establish injustice, which may 
promote the welfare of a class at the expense of the rest of the 
people, or which may deprive ourselves or our posterity of the 
blessings of liberty. 

I come now, Mr. Speaker, to the consideration of the body of 
the instrument. 



THE SOUTHERNER DESIRES PEACE. 



WASHINGTON C. WHITTHORNE, TENNESSEE. 



(Delivered in the House of Representatives March 29th, 1871.) 
I respectfully but firmly deny, for them and in their name, that 
they are not animated by as true and loyal devotion to law, order, 
and the sacred rights of person and property as any portion of the 
American people. Crim.e exists everywhere. D.efiance to law by 
exceptional individuals is historically coincident with law itself; 
and while to this extent it may exist, aggravated by the peculiar 
condition of society just emerging from a war which swept it with 
all the devastation of a flood, and which, like the flood, left its drift 
and scum as a deposit, yet, sir, the whole body-politic is not demor- 
alized. On the contrary, the people present to you higher evidences 
of thrift, economy, labor, wealth, and prosperity — the natural re- 
sults of obedience to law and order — than any other given section 
of your Union, as I think I will be able to show before I am done. 
But before entering upon this task, will you go with me, Mr. 
Speaker, for a moment into a review of the condition of the South 
since the close of that great civil struggle? 



04 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

To the returned confederate soldier, when his flag was furled, 
home was a scene of desolation. Gaunt poverty introduced him 
to barren fields and cheerless firesides. His companions had been 
thinned; numbers of them were no more; all around him was 
mourning. Falsehood and treachery, and not of the negro, for in 
the main he was true, had been the sentinels who had guarded his 
loved ones during his absence. There was much in this to dis- 
courage him; and yet, further, many of them were without the 
means of support to life. They cried for bread. Look at Georgia 
and Alabama and South Carolina during 1866 and 1867, when whole 
communities, without regard to former position, were dependent 
upon the charity of others. Yet when ordinarily despair would 
have welcomed death, you find the southern man not forgetting 
that he was an American, in whom self-taught, if not inherent, 
there existed a devotion to popular institutions, a love of the great 
principles upon which these States are founded, unquenched and, 
unconquerable. This loyalty, inherent, he pledged to the govern- 
ment, to whose allegiance and protection he returned, and at once 
yielded to its laws a ready obedience. He was born an American, 
he was a citizen of the United States, and entitled to the funda- 
mental principles upon which its government was based to all of the 
rights, privileges, and immunities of a citizen. 

With courage, alacrity, and cheerfulness he went to work to 
repair his individual fortune, to build up waste places, to restore 
order, to aid his neighbor and the public; in fine, to perform all 
the duties of the laborious, useful citizen. How was this spirit 
met? Pause and look at the picture. Special courts and tribunals, 
hitherto unknown to the law, were organized, and his rights made 
subject thereto. He was deprived of the right to hold office, even 
the most petty; he was cut off from the highest badge of American 
citizenship, the right to vote; all motives of individual exertion 
were taken away from him, and the negro, his inferior, invested 
with them and made his superior. In all this there was much to 
provoke him; yet, sir, he submitted. He saw his State government 
and its high offices, as well as its lowest tribunals, pass into the 
hands of parties who had no identity with the soil, the institutions, 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 65 

the property, or the people of the State; parties who, taking ad- 
vantage of his weakness and the supposed hostility of the national 
government to him, had organized the negroes into secret political 
clubs, holding out to them plunder of and dominion over him, 
inculcating them with the idea that the white man was their 
oppressor, and for hundreds of years had outraged them, thus 
raising the worst of passions; and who, by and through such ma- 
chinery, had seized hold of the State governments, for jobs and 
corrupt purposes and corrupt individual corporations, levied enor- 
mous taxes and created enormous debts; so that to-day the spectacle 
is presented of multiplied bankrupt States. Think for a moment, 
Mr. Speaker, of the volume of increased indebtedness and increased 
taxes put upon these people, and answer me, if it is at all wonderful 
that corrupt Governors should be impeached, that these people 
should be restive at the call of the tax-gatherer? Think for a 
moment of the condition of your American white brother, disarmed, 
lorded over by the ignorant, thriftless black, who, the slave and tool 
of miserable tricksters and plunderers, yet flaunts his freedom in 
his brother's face. Can you wonder that his blood will occasionally 
outrun his judgment? 

I have but glanced at the picture as it exists in the South. I 
would, sir, that before action had been taken upon the representa- 
tions which I know do that people most grievous wrong and 
injustice, an inquiry, impartial and fair, had been made. Justice, I 
fain believe, would have been done. You would have seen, sir, 
how grossly they have been slandered and how maliciously they 
have been misreported; how mountains have been made of mole- 
hills; how giants and heroes have been manufactured out of dwarfs 
and sneaks. You would have seen, by the removal of the skin, the 
ass; but beyond all that you would have seen what to you would 
have been a most conclusive answer to these libels upon States, 
commonwealths, and people; and as your eye took in the full 
measure of the picture, your heart would have swollen with ex- 
ultant pride, and your judgment and patriotism would have paid 
a tribute in their wonder and satisfaction at the convincing evidences 



66 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

of the devotion of this people to law and order, presented in their 
repaired and new-built railroads, in their increased manufactures, 
in their flourishing high schools, in their luxuriant and rich yielding 
crops, in their growing cities and towns, in their improved farms, 
and in their increase of population. Sir, look at these circum- 
stantial witnesses, whose testimony outweighs a thousand such as 
malice and disappointment have sped to your capital. 
***** * * *** 

But, sir, understand me. I willingly pay tribute to the loyalty 
of the negroes, as a mass, to their masters, during the war; they 
were faithful and true, apd I believe, sir, it would have been better 
for them, for you, for us, and the great interests of the country, 
if political trickery had not undertaken to manipulate them, ap- 
pealing to their vilest passions in order to advance corrupt ends 
and purposes. 

The whole country in the state of peace; no more disorder in 
the South than in the North; no more of murder, no more of arson, 
no more of robbery, no more of larceny, no more of outrages 
committed by persons in disguise; yet this people, presenting all 
the physical evidences that go to make up a peaceful, industrious 
population, observant of law and order, are to be stricken down, 
deprived of the due administration of justice in the destruction of 
their local and convenient tribunals, and deprived of the great safe- 
guards of personal liberty. States and commonwealths are to be 
destroyed for mere local disturbances or occasional personal 
trespasses upon the complaint of single individuals, or upon the 
humor of one man or the power of a cabal. All this, in face of 
their earnest prayer for peace, their earnest protestations and 
practical manifestations of obedience to law and order. 
"Oh! bloodiest picture in the book of time 
Sarmatia fell! unwept, without a crime." 

Shall another write this of niy beloved South? May I not turn 
to the great commercial interests, to whose riches we so largely 
contribute, to the great body of the agricultural and mechanical 
laborers, whose burdens we share and lighten, in the payment of 
the expenses of the government, to the noble and just, to whom 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 67 

we lay bare our past lives and present motives, the purity and 
sincerity of which make us akin, to array themselves against 
measures proposed which threaten so much of woe, not only to us, 
but to them. 

Then, sir, what is the lesson and duty of the hour? It is that 
you retrace your steps, go to the people of the South with words 
of kindness; go and convince them that in a spirit of justice you 
will administer the government, making its burdens and its benefits 
equal; remove all causes of irritation, proscribe proscription, and, 
in my judgment, that the people will show to you and to the world 
that they are fit custodians of the trust to preserve constitutional 
liberty now and forever. Reverentially are they now attached to 
the institutions and forms of government under which they were 
born and reared. They want no king, no emperor, no monarch, 
no dictator, no cabal, no oligarchy, but a government where the 
will of the people (bound only by sacred obligations to respect the 
rights of the weak and unfortunate) shall be the supreme law of 
the land; a government where equal and exact justice shall be done 
to all men of all persuasions — a government like that made by our 
fathers. Give us, Mr. Speaker, such a government, and around it 
our affections will gather now, and with it our hopes and our 
energies in the future will go, to preserve it and perpetuate it 
forever. 

Sir, in the few minutes remaining of my time, I hope the House 
will indulge me in a few remarks somewhat personal to myself. I 
protest my own devotion to a republican form of government. 
With me it is as dear as any aspiration connected with life, and 
if I have one motive in life above another, it is that that form of 
government shall be perpetuated, and shall be transmitted to my 
generations in all coming time. 



08. ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 



THE POVERTY OF THE SOUTH AND ITS CAUSE. 



WILLIAM D. KELLEY, OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



(Delivered in the House of Representatives, March 29th, 1871.) 

Mr. Speaker, I approach the discussion of the pending question 
with no hostility to the people of the South or any part of them, 
but with an interest in their welfare and prosperity that I scarcely 
feel for the people of my own colder section of the country. They 
are the children of the past; and appreciating the trials they are 
compelled to endure, I give them my sympathy, and am ready to 
labor with them to convert the cross they bear into a crown of 
triumph. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Whitthorne) 
for alluding to the material resources of the South, and thus diver- 
sifying the argument on that side of the House, on this and kindred 
questions, by referring to them and proposing them as a subject 
worthy of consideration. 

Sir, as I listened to his statement of the productions of the 
South, as shown by the recent census, and which he seemed to 
think startling by reason of their grand totals, I could but grieve at 
the meager result and ask myself what they would have been had 
the people of the South frankly accepted the condition of affairs at 
the close of the war, and, looking to the future, had welcomed 
immigrants from the North and from other countries with their 
enterprise, their industries, their capital, and, if you please, their 
cupidity; for I know that there is no part of our country, and 
doubt whether there is any part of the world, that presents such 
golden invitations to the poor man of skill and enterprise, or the 
rich man, who would by legitimate and productive industry, speedily 
double, treble, or quintuple his capital, as the territory embraced in 
the States lately in rebellion! 

As I have traveled through that section, two causes of wonder 
have been steadily presented to me: one the amazing natural wealth 
of the country, and the other the terrible poverty and ignorance of 
the mass of the people. How vast and varied are the resources of 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 69 

the South when compared with those of the North! Its cotton, 
tobacco, rice, and sugar fields, of which it enjoys the monopoly, 
are surrounded by fields on which every production of the North 
may be grown in greater abundance, in proportion to the labor 
expended, than we can produce them; its water-power, greater 
certainly than that of the eastern and middle States of the North, 
runs, as it has done through centuries, to waste; its mineral re- 
sources are in such a variety and combination as are nowhere else 
found within the limits of our broad country; its sun shines all the 
year round, so that while they of cold New England or the far 
Northwest are housed around the hearthside and the glowing fire, 
and the children and good wife are robed in woolens, they of the 
South are sporting in the open fields and consuming fuel only for 
culinary purposes. And yet, with all these resources, the people 
of the South are to-day — in a less degree, thank God, than I found 
them in the spring of 1867— steeped in poverty and unfamiliar with 
many household and other conveniences which the working people 
of the North are used to and regard as essential to their comfort 
and that of their families. The homes of the working people of 
Philadelphia, lighted with gas and supplied with hot and cold 
water and bath-rooms, afford comforts which you will find only in 
dwellings recently erected in the large cities or principal towns of 
the South. 

I speak of these things not to disparage the people of the South 
or to wound their sensibilities. Their deplorable condition is the 
result of the infernal system of slavery, which denied wag<- the 
laborer, and so robbed toil of its dignity and aspiriiti. • -d 
capital of its just rewards. When and where labor is well paid 
capital turns rapidly, for there are many consumers of its produc- 
tions, and with each turn comes profit. Where industry is honored 
and rewarded and capital is safe cities spring up, and that which 
v/as farm land, little better, in the absence of a near market for its 
productions, than valueless, becomes priceless with the growth of 
the city, around which farm land increases with marvelous rapidity 
in both its market and its intrinsic value. 
***** * * *** 



70 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Sir, the showing of southern productions made by him will not, 
I repeat, sustain the theory of the gentleman from Tennessee. He 
says that the agricultural productions of that section equal in value 
the entire productions of the North. Will the statesmen and 
exconomists of the South never escape from this sad delusion? 
Why, sir, the annual hay crop alone of the northern States equals 
in value the annual crop of all the agricultural staples of the South, 
among which, of course, I do not include hay, which is now, as a 
result of the exigencies of the war, produced there to some extent. 

The argument presented by the Democrats on this bill, except 
the suggestions of the gentleman from Tennessee, which I now 
leave, is to me an old and familiar one. It may present some novel 
aspects to new members, but to those of us who have been here 
for the last ten years it is an old song, threadbare, and sadly 
monotonous. Its burden is the want of constitutional power. Sir, 
when I came here ten years ago, that plausible, but fallacious sug- 
gestion was ringing not only in my ears, but in the ear of the nation. 
''You cannot coerce a State, because the Constitution does not 
invest you with the power;" and in the long interim I have heard 
the suggestion repeated as an argument against every bill or 
proposition that has been before the House for the purpose of 
suppressing the rebellion or securing to the people of the results 
of the war. 

President Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand troops was 
wholly unconstitutional, according to the theories of the Demo- 
cratic members of the House. For weeks and months the country 
rang with their denunciations of the "unconstitutional" suspension 
of- the writ of habeas corpus. The law authorizing the issue of 
irredeemable legal-tender notes was, as they asserted, a stab at the 
Constitution from which it could never recover. The draft was 
unconstitutional, so nefariously unconstitutional that it was to be 
resisted by force if necessary. The States alone must supply the 
quotas of troops, and upon them the call must be made. We can 
aU„ readily imagine the alacrity with which Kentucky, pledged to 
neutrality, would have responded to such a call! Confiscation and 
emancipation! For neither of these was there a warrant in the 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 71 

Constitution, said the leaders of the Democratic party. So, too, 
as to the enlistment of colored troops. Well do I remember hearing 
in this hall, long after the midnight hour had passed, while 
Crittenden and Wickliffe were still here from Kentucky, the thun- 
dering denunciations of the violation of the Constitution involved 
in that measure. White farmers, workingmen, and others might 
die to save the country, but to put the life of a valuable slave at 
risk in such a cause was to the Democratic mind a sacrilegious 
violation of the Constitution. When we admitted West Virginia 
as a State the country was almost deafened by the cry that it was 
unconstitutional, inasmuch as the State of Virginia, then a member 
of the southern confederacy and in arms against the government, 
had not given its consent thereto, in accordance with the require- 
ments of the Constitution. 
***** * * *** 

Mr. Kelley: I decline to yield to the gentleman for a speech, but 
will answer his question, and tell him to what I attribute the 
unhappy condition of the South. I attribute it to Democratic 
influence, as I did the breaking out of the rebellion, to the fact that 
the southern people had been misled by the Democratic party of 
the North into the belief that if they threatened war the cowardly 
people of the North would acquiesce, and there would be no blood- 
shed. I attribute it to the same cause to which I attributed the 
last year and a half of the rebellion, when the confederacy had 
become a mere shell, and its government was "robbing the cradle 
and the grave" to replenish the ranks of its exhausted armies; to 
the influence upon its misguided leaders of the sympathetic speeches 
of Democratic leaders in the North, to the resolutions of the 
Chicago convention declaring the war to be a failure, and de- 
manding peace at any price; and to the course of the northern 
Democratic press that led the rebels to hope that northern resist- 
ance to their armies would be checked at home or exhausted, and 
that they would still by such aid be able to establish their govern- 
ment. 

Democratic speeches made here in this House and the course 
of the Democratic press maintained the rebellion for nearly two 



72 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

years. And, in conclusion, I say if the Democracy of the North 
had condemned the outrages in the South which we are considering, 
the condition of affairs there now would be very different from 
what it is; and that even now, while we discuss this bill, the 
assertions of gentlemen, sustained by a plausible show of argument, 
that there is no constitutional power in Congress or the government 
to suppress these great wrongs and restore public tranquility, are 
heard among the Ku Klux and hiss them on to slaughter. In 
replying to this question I have given the gentleman from Wis- 
consin (Mr. Eldridge)*, my impressions honestly, as I would utter 
them before my God in final account. 



THIS IS WAR. 



WILLIAM D. KELLEY, OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



(Delivered in the House of Representatives March 29th, 1871, 
as a part of the remarks elsewhere given in this book under the 
head of 'The Poverty of the South and Its Cause.") 

As the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Whitthorne) adjured 
us to-day to retrace our steps, it will try to retrace the steps which 
we have taken and undo the work we have done, and which, if 
peace is to dwell within our borders, must stand forever. "Retrace 
your steps," sai'' he. How far back would he have us go? Will 
he and his par..; :iends be content if we wipe out the fifteenth 
amendment, or will they require us to add to it the fourteenth and 
the thirteenth? Will they pause there, or do they intend to require 
us to unite with them in returning to slavery those in whose veins 
flow in equal degree Caucasian and African blood, and those in 
whom seven-eighths of the blood bind them by ties of closer kindred 
to the white people of the South, and the other eighth to descend- 
ants long ago brought in slavery from Africa? 

How far must we retrace our steps to secure the blessed boon 
of peace? Not one step. No, gentlemen, there will be no retracing 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 75 

of steps. We Republicans mean to go on until we shall give full 
force and effect to every provision of the American Constitution, 
until we shall have embodied not only in the laws, but intrenched 
in the daily habits of the American people, the great prophecy 
made in the Declaration of Independence and referred to by the 
scholarly and eloquent gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Hoar) 
to-day, the right of every man within our broad limits to be 
absolutely free in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. Until this shall be done the Heaven-inspired Republican 
party will not have accomplished its mission. 

Sir, a government that cannot protect the humblest man within 
its limits, that cannot snatch from oppression the feeblest woman 
or child, is not a government. It is wanting in the vital attribute 
of government. The power to protect its people inheres indestruct- 
ibly in all governments, and that frame of Constitution or laws 
which does not provide for it fails to establish government. 

But in our case we are not left to inference and deduction. The 
declaration of this correlative power and duty is blazoned in the 
forefront of our Constitution. Its preamble is brief, but pregnant, 
and among the few declared objects of the government then to be 
created v/ere these: "to establish justice, to insure domestic tran- 
quility, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of 
liberty to ourselves and our posterity." These were objects for 
which our government was ordained; and it is little less than 
impious for gentlemen to tell us that no powers granted originally 
or ingrafted by any of the amendments, empower us to secure to 
all the people of the South their specified and iundamental rights. 
Sir, if without the powers given by the recent amendments to the 
Constitution we had not had the power to make and enforce such 
a bill as this, the life of the nation could not have been maintained, 
and the government must have gone down in the midst of war in 
the earliest days of the rebellion. We found, as exigencies arose, 
that the powers with which to meet them were in the Constitution, 
and we exercised them, as I doubt not we would do now, inde- 
pendent of the recent amendments to the Constitution. 



74 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Sir, we are in the condition of war. Domestic tranquility does 
not prevail throughout the Sotith. I admit that there may be 
considerable portions of the country in which a general state of 
good order prevails. I make due allowance for a condition of 
society following a great war, I make due allowance for all that, 
and for the effects of poverty and ignorance that necessarily resulted 
from slavery. Violence is to be expected under such circumstances. 
Violence, sporadic, emotional, sudden, riotous, turbulent, we were 
to expect. But the possibility of organized, armed, trained, drilled, 
sworn bands ot murderers, who should murder for political effect, 
came not within the scope of my imagination. Yet the proofs are 
glaring as the sun at noon-day, or the stars in a moonless and 
cloudless night that this state of afifairs has existed, and does 
exist, to a large extent among men who are bound by the highest 
honorable obligation known to soldiers, a parole of honor, to 
remain at peace. The camps or Klans of the Ku Klux are in many 
instances officered by paroled confederate officers, and largely com- 
posed of paroled soldiers. Their camps and Klans are a military 
organization, and they are all armed. 

The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Elliott) told us the 
other day that there came to them through the port of Charleston, 
in swiftly recurring invoices, great numbers of Winchester rifles, 
and a particular species of revolving pistol. Poor men, without 
visible means of support, whose clothes are ragged and whose lives 
are almost or absolutely those of vagrants, are thus armed with new 
and costly rifles, and wear in their belts a brace of expensive 
pistols. I will not pause to ask who furnish these weapons, with 
which southern Republicans are to be awed into silence and inaction 
or murdered. 

I repeat, sir, that this is war. And that the facts known to us 
would justify Congress in declaring certain counties of South 
Carolina, those recently in disturbance, and from which the officers 
were driven, and certain parts of other States to be in rebellion, and 
authorize the President to use the United States army in the sup- 
pression of armed rebellion and the establishment of peace and 
order. The bill under consideration proposes no such violent 



r 



IX THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 75 



remedy as this. It proposes to apply legal and peaceable remedies 
there, and anywhere else in the country where, under the circum- 
stances described in the bill, the laws are resisted or nullified by 
force or armed conspiracy. I would have no more done for the 
South, or for any of the southern States, than I would have Con- 
gress do for my own State. When the men of Western Pennsyl- 
vania undertook to resist the law by armed combination, Washing- 
ton marched the troops of the United States and the militia under 
his command into that State and restored order, and we, the good 
people of Pennsylvania, have found none of our rights invaded, 
nor our institutions at all impaired, because when lawlessness 
became stronger than the State government, the United States 
stepped in, and by restoring the supremacy of the law, established 
order throughout our limits. 

Sir, do we live under a government? Are we a civilized people? 
Because, if we are, and if we do live under a government, the 
power to suppress outrages such as these is at our command, and 
the duty of doing it is laid upon us by a power higher than a 
written Constitution. Humanity implores, and the Father of man 
and God of justice commands us to put forth our powers and 
suppress this fiendish organization, and give peace and security to 
all the men in the South, let them have been born and reared where 
they may and their color or politics be what they may, and I thank 
God that the Republican party at last seems disposed to do its 
whole duty in this behalf. 

Oh, how old and exhausted arguments do come back again? 
Said the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Morgan) to-day, "It was an 
insult to the State of Kentucky to appoint a colored mail agent," 
and he suggested that that colored man had been appointed to that 
position for the purpose of insulting Kentucky and bringing on 
acts of violence. So it used to be said. "Now, you will only anger 
the South if you do that." "That will be an insult to the South." 
The South, with a million of armed men in the field, were to have 
their delicate feelings considered; and we were to do nothing in the 
way of legislation that would shock their sensibilities. And now 



76 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

we are to permit a band of sworn men, forty thousand strong, in 
the single State of North Carolina, to go abroad at night a scourge 
of the people, and to exist as a terror by day. And for what pur- 
pose? Why do gentlemen on the other side endeavor to persuade 
us to desist? Is it not to enable those who sympathized with them 
and are now in political association with them, to accomplish by 
murder, conspiracy, and terror what they failed to do by open war 
— take possession of this government? And when this is done, to 
follow it up by attempting the mad scheme of retracing "the steps" 
taken by the American people since rebel guns were fired at Sumter, 
and turning backward a providential revolution. 



THE INFERIORITY OF THE NEGRO. 



WILLIAM D. KELLEY, OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



(Delivered in the House of Representatives, March 29th, 1871.) 
The inferiority of the negro has also been hashed up again. 
Sir, will gentlemen never learn that morals, industry, manhood, 
general intelligence, stamp the man, and not the character of his 
hair, or the color of his skin? Will they never learn that the object 
of government is not to protect the strong, who can care for them- 
selves, but to protect the weak, the ignorant, and those who are 
degraded because they have been made to suffer in the past? And 
how shall you protect such but by giving them their equal political 
rights, and incorporating them into the political people and power 
of the country? 

They were soldiers, they are taxpayers; their industry created 
the wealth of the South, and will soon restore it if their rights are 
maintained. The loss by war is simply the loss of the annual crop. 
It is marvelous, yet well understood by those who have studied 
the philosophy of the thing, how soon a war-scarred nation regains 
its wealth; the annual crops coming in from fields quickened by 
the wastes of war, fields that have lain fallow during the time of 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 77 

strife, tilled with renewed courage and industry by the impoverished 
people, send forth crops larger than ever since they were first tilled. 
And the observer finds at the end of the fourth or fifth year that 
the wealth of the people equals the amount that existed when the 
war began. 

The outraged colored people of the South have earned the 
dollars, grown the cotton, the tobacco, the rice, cut the timber, 
built the factories, to which the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Whitthorne) referred; and shall they enjoy none of them? The 
madness of the South made them free, and we have fully enfran- 
chised them by statute and constitutional provision; and shall they 
have the word of promise to the ear only? Shall they have the 
nominal right to the privileges of citizenship without participation 
in the general administration of the government? Shall they have 
the right to vote, and yet be held by a master class in ignorance, 
subjection, and degradation, so that when election day comes they 
may be driven, like dumb cattle, to the polls, or like serfs, away 
from the places at which those who are really free exercise their 
right? Gentlemen from the South will learn. 
***** * * *** 

It stands, sir, a spectacle for gods and men, so that many 
millions oi this long enslaved and oppressed race, who, limited 
as their opportunities have been, have since shown that there were 
among them so many capable of performing all the duties of 
citizens, and who are animated by noble aspirations; but who, while 
the master and adult male members of the family were away 
fighting to maintain slavery, they toiled for and watched over the 
wives and children and aged parents of their oppressors, trusting, 
with child-like faith, to the God whose day of deliverance they 
believed to be surely at hand. 
***** * * *** 

But, to recur to a point to which I was addressing myself when 
diverted by an interruption, the negro, who is spoken of so slight- 
ingly by gentlemen, is now one of the political elements of the 
country. There are more than four millions of them in a population 
of about thirty-eight millions. They must have not only what the 



78 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Constitution guarantees to them, the right of suffrage, but must 
be recognized in all communities as an element of our people, 
entitled to all rights, privileges, and immunities, especially in South 
Carolina, where, in i860, four-sevenths of the people were of 
African descent; in Mississippi, where a still larger proportion of 
them are so; in Louisiana, where the races divide about equally; 
and in other sections, learn this fact, the sooner they enjoy peace 
and prosperity. The sooner they quicken into fruition the hopes, 
aspirations, and energies of the blacks and the poor whites of the 
South, by giving them steadiness of employment, by inviting to 
their midst capital to advance industrial enterprises, the sooner will 
they enjoy peace and safety and a measure of prosperity which no 
part of the South has ever enjoyed. 

It is within my knowledge, sir, that in the early part of 1867 
there was a combination of northern capitalists who had gathered 
together subscriptions amounting to $300,000,000, to be placed at 
the disposal of the people of the South on such security as they 
could give. These men mere ready to establish a Credit Mobilier 
with such a capital which would lend money on mortgage payable 
in annual installments, the entire principal not to be called in for a 
given number of years. At the instance of these gentlemen I went 
through the South to look at its resources and to report upon the 
probable safety of such investments, and from New Orleans I made 
a preliminary report, such as could be made by observations from 
the railroad and from intercourse with the people I had met upon 
the great thoroughfare. It was favorable. The next report they 
received was of a certain scene in Mobile, in which, as my com- 
panions tell me — for military power restrained me from making a 
personal examination — the wall before which I stood while speaking 
to the people was marked with sixty-seven bullet marks. One man 
was struck in the head, the bullet passing around under the scalp 
and taking off part of the ear as it came out. Another, within three 
feet of me, placing his hands upon his abdomen, cried out, "My 
God, I am shot!" and fell dead to the sidewalk. That was the next 
report. It had precisely the effect, gentlemen, that these assassina- 
tions of humble men have upon your interests and those of your 
constituents. 



IN THE A:MERICAN CONGRESS. 79 

Every man driven out of the South, every annoyance, social or 
otherwise, inflicted upon his family, is a barrier to the flow of 
capital and a check to the development of your resources. And 
for your sake, as well as for the sake of our common country and 
her free institutions and laws, I will support this bill. I do it in no 
spirit of hostility, but with a feeling of fraternity. 

You could have had in Mississippi a large infusion of young 
farmers from Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, but for the slaughter 
of the two Zooks, who had gone there without politics or political 
affiliation and carried their hereditary estate with them. And, Mr. 
Speaker, when their crop of cotton was ripe and ready for picking, 
their carcasses were found in the field. The neighbors who had 
annoyed them up to that time would not permit them to enjoy the 
fruits of their labor; and the negroes, who had been paid their 
wages, and had not worked on shares, were charged with having 
murdered them, because, as it was falsely said, their wages had been 
^withheld, and they suspected that the crop was about to be 
carried ofif. 

Every instance of that kind takes from the South her power, 
disparages her in the estimation of others, and breeds doubt and 
dissension among her people; and I say to gentlemen who expect 
the steps we have taken to be retracted: "Do not lay to your souls 
the flattering unction that if the Democratic party comes into power 
you will undo what has been done." Revolutions which enfranchise 
millions of men never go backward. Masses of men once enfran- 
chised, and who have drank freely of the waters of freedom, cannot 
be re-enslaved. Join with us, then, in giving peace and security to 
your fertile and beautiful section. Say to these people who were 
so humane and so loyal to your families during the war: 

"We will protect you; we will win your love and confidence by 
guarantying your rights." Do that, and it will give you peace, and 
result in your prosperity; and the North and Europe will hasten 
with their capital to rebuild your waste places, to construct your 
railroads, make your harbors, and convert your now useless min- 
erals, into wealth for you and the world. The school house and 
the church will then arise where are now to be found vacant barns 



80 - ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

in which camps and Klans of Ku Klux meet to arrange their 
unholy work. 

Do not dream that you can disfranchise these men. They know 
what freedom is, and even the worm will turn and sting. If we do 
not interpose to give them safety, and you hav^ not the generosity 
to do it, beware; for a day may come, if millions of people shall be 
driven to despair, when for every freedman's hut that is desolated, 
ten blazing mansions may illumine the midnight sky. Sink them 
not to that condition; save yourselves, I implore you, by proving 
that there is in you as much humanity as there was in the slaves 
who, while you warred for their degradation and enslavement, 
labored for and watched over your wives and children. (Applause.) 



OUR LIBERTY NOT INDESTRUCTIBLE. 



(Extract from an address delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives March 31st, 1871, by Hon. Stevenson Archer, of Maryland.) 

Our people seem to labor under the delusion that liberty is 
indestructible. If they will continue, they will soon find a sad end 
to their delusion. We have seen bad precedents followed 
by worse. We have seen innovations repeated, and each 
succeeding one magnified. This bill is the last and greatest of 
these innovations. We have seen act follow act, until all the orig- 
inal rights of the States have been absorbed and centered in Con- 
gress, and Congress now proposes to pass all the power thus ab- 
sorbed into the hands of one man. Let this bill pass, and then 
farewell to the republic. 

Although the people have until the late elections been silent 
and passive, I pray God they miy yet reclaim the lost ground; and 
the hope of every patriot now rests on them. I appeal to them to 
correct these abuses and to restore the government to its original 
beauty. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 81 

Men who knowingly err will generally justify themselves on 
-some pretext, and though they have to do so by appealing to some 
popular prejudices. Revenge is one of the base passions of human 
nature, and, no doubt, has great weight in shaping public sentiment 
at the North against the southern people. And there are those 
•who would pander to this vicious passion by justifying the extreme 
measures of Congress as a proper punishment to the people of the 
South for their errors. 

Such a motive may have influence with some, but it is an aggra- 
vation of the wrongs. Congress has no right to inflict punishment 
on individuals or on whole communities. How blind and mis- 
guided is that policy which undertakes to bring back a misguided 
people by oppressing and punishing them? Was ever a people 
brought to love or even respect a government which oppressed 
them? Man can never be brought to love those who oppress him. 
Religion may teach it but in vain. And if there be any such thing 
as a free government which does not command the respect and 
approbation of the people, statesmen have failed to show us how 
it can be maintained. Punishment was not the object; it was a 
shallow pretense, used to deceive the people. The veriest rebel or 
secessionist at the South becomes at once a loyal citizen, purged of 
liis offense, by joining the party and sustaining its extreme 
measures. Many of its most prominent men at the South, from 
Governors down, were the most zealous and active secessionists. 
They are rewarded and not punished. There is great joy over their 
■conversion to the Republican party. 

This proves that punishment was not the object. If the southern 
people are disloyal, as they are charged with being, oppression 
lias made them so, and the Radical party is responsible therefor. 
At the close of the war they acknowledged their error, they had 
suflfered grievously for it, and were anxious to be restored to their 
relations with the government, and did all in their power to place 
themselves right. They were repulsed with scorn and consigned 
to punishment under military despotisms. 

That old Roman was wise who said in the Roman Senate the 
way to attach a conquered people to their conquerors is to treat 



82 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

them with kindness. And it was said that Romulus was very wise^ 
with respect to the people he subdued, by making those who were 
his enemies the same day citizens. The southern people are even 
yet treated as enemies, and such treatment is very sure to make 
them so. Kindness is the fountain from which attachment springs 
as well for governments as for individuals. 

A Roman emperor made a conspirator against his life his warm 
friend by forgiveness and kindness. Had the Republican party 
pursued this policy after the war closed, it would have given 
renewed strength and renewed attachment to the government. 
Besides, sir, the secessionists had some claims to forgiveness, 
especially from New England. It was a plant of northern origin, 
as early as 1796, under the nurture of the Hartford Courant, and 
upon the acquisition of Louisiana it received a new stimulus and 
bid fair to bring forth its fruits. Its spread was encouraged by 
public journals, public meetings, legislative bodies, and from the 
pulpits. It was fostered by such names as Plummer, Pickering, 
Hillhouse, Hunt, Otis, Griswold, and others, and culminated in 
that Hartford convention which sent delegates to Washington as 
its advocates. Its prospects, however, were blighted by the general 
joy produced by General Jackson's brilliant defense of New Orleans. 

To say nothing of the effect of this bill on the South, what of 
the northern people? By sustaining the Radical party they but 
forge the chains that ere long will encircle them in the toils of 
slavery. They have encouraged precedents which this day by this 
bill threaten to break up their State governments and place them 
under a one-man, military despotism, which will subject their lives, 
liberties, and property to military tribunals. And what of the 
western people, that great community of noble men whose minds 
should be as free as the air they breathe, will they, too, crouch 
before the tyrant's scepter, voluntarily surrender their rights, and) 
willingly take upon themselves the yoke of slavery? 

Will they quietly stand by and see a military satrap, with 
licentious soldiery, take possession of their States and State govern- 
ments? Will they calmly see the standard of military supremacy 
erected on the ruins of civil power? The North, the West, and I 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 83 

the Middle States had better beware. They will but fill the chalice 
which ere long will be applied to their own lips. When it conies 
they will have but themselves to blame. In adhering to the 
Republican party, they have but fostered the monster which is now 
about to crush them. 



IN DEFENSE OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



(Extracts from an address by Hon. Alfred M. Waddell, of 
North Carolina, in the House of Representatives, April ist, 1871.) 

Mr. Speaker, I rise to the performance of a sacred filial duty 
to my mother State. And it is fortunate for me that I am called 
upon to do so to-day, because very recently, in another place, 
another of her children intrusted with her honor and her dearest 
interests, a sentinel upon her highest watch-tower, has betrayed 
his trust. Sir, in the criminal code of the Romans there was no 
provision made for the punishment of parricide, because it was 
considered an impossible crime. The unnatural being who could 
slay father or mother was considered as outside of the range of 
possibilities in creation. What shall be said of the American citizen 
who, when his mother State lies prostrate and helpless under 
accumulated calamities, unparalleled in the history of this country, 
when she stretches her bleeding arms and utters her pleading voice 
to him to aid and defend her, not only turns a deaf ear to her cry, 
but can become the willing tool of her defamers and despoilers; 
cannot only stand by consenting unto her death, but can himself 
give the last, final stab to her honor and her life? Sir, such 
a character as that was fitly described in the burning language of 
the poet-patriot of Ireland: 

"Unpraised are her sons till they've learned to betray. 

Undistinguished they live, if they shame not their sires; 
And the torch that would light them thro' dignity's way 
Must be caught from the pile where their country expires." 



8-1: ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

But while I admit that crimes have been committed, and that 
from various causes the perpetrators of them have escaped punish- 
ment, I do most emphatically deny that the people, or any 
considerable portion of them, countenance or encourage the wrong- 
doers. I deny that there has been or is now any resistance to the 
execution of the laws, State or Federal. I deny that the property 
or lives of loyal men (which too often means licensed thieves) are 
not safe down there; and I assert that the humblest officer in the 
State, even though he be a negro constable, so black that charcoal 
would make a white mark on him, can go in safety, alone, and at 
midnight, and arrest the best citizen of the State. 

Admitting all that can justly and truthfully be said against her 
people, I assert that in no State of this Union is there now, or has. 
there been, less crime of any kind than in the State of North 
Carolina. I assert that a more quiet, peaceable, and law-abiding 
people than her citizens do not live on earth, not even excepting: 
that favored land which was blessed by the nativity, and now 
rejoices in the existence, of the gentleman from Massachusetts. 
Still they have been pilloried before the world as a decivilized 
community, in which social chaos prevailed; the State has been 
represented as one in which the genius of murder held high carnival, 
as an accursed land of outlaws and assassins, in which there was 
no protection for life, liberty, or property, and upon which the iron 
hand of military power must be laid to reduce it to order and 
peace. 

We, her Representatives on this floor, have sat quietly and 
listened to the denunciations of our people by gentlemen who have 
no other acquaintance with them than such as they have gathered 
from their slanderers and traducers, until we would have been losti 
in amazement except for the fact that no style of argument other 
than that of generosity can surprise us. We have no bitter words 
to say to gentlemen on the other side while defending our State 
and our people. They have worn the collar six long, weary years 
in silence and sorrow, and if they had not been sustained by the 
deathless spirit of true heroism and love of liberty, they would 
have utterly succumbed to their fate. They must still submit tc 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 85 

whatever legislation is provided for them; but, although reduced 
to a condition of political degradation heretofore unknown in this 
country, although smitten by poverty, plundered and oppressed, 
they still struggle manfully on, clinging to the hope that their 
countrymen will yet do them justice, and restore to them their 
rights. 

I will describe to you in a few words the true condition of the 
people of North Carolina after the war, and their experience during 
the past five years of Republican rule, while under the absolute 
control of ''the party of progress and great moral ideas," and I will 
say at the outset that no party in the history of this country ever 
had such an opportunity to perpetuate its power by intrenching itself 
behind impregnable lines, and no party ever so utterly wasted its 
opportunities and so covered itself with disgrace. Coming out of 
the great struggle like a strong man exhausted by fever, the State 
lay prostrate and helpless. I shall not insult the intelligence of 
the House by dwelling on the evils attending the annihilation of the 
entire labor system of a country at a single blow, nor shall I harrow 
my own feelings by a recital of the sufferings and humiliations to 
which our people were subjected. Suffice it to say that they pre- 
sented a condition which demanded, if not the experiment of active 
charity, at least the privilege of exemption from further molestation. 
They had complied with all that was required of them by the 
government, and only desired to rebuild, as best they might, their 
waste places. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, to return to the bill under consideration, 
I wish to utter my -solemn protest against its passage, not merely 
because it will affect the people whom I represent, but as an 
American citizen, who, regardless of your incredulity, still loves 
his country and earnestly desires to promote her glory and 
prosperity. 

If the people of the South were inspired by a sentiment of re- 
venge toward their countrymen, if, like Samson of old, they wished 
to involve the whole American people with themselves in a common 
ruin, I know no way in which that sentiment could be more swiftly 



b 



m ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

and surely gratified than by the passage of this bill. Pass it and 
you tear down the last column on which rests the still fair but 
disfigured temple of American liberty. Pass it, and by congress- 
ional enactment you will have established an absolute despotism, 
not o/er the South alone, but over the whole country. Pass it, and 
the whole power of this government will be in the hands of one, 
whose hands never relax their grasp on anything that is put into 
them. And then you will see that of which you have now but a 
glimpse; then you will indeed see him "instruct his princes after 
his will and teach his Senators" not to oppose his schemes of 
aggrandizement. 

If gentlemen will not listen to the protest of the people of the 
southern States against this rank usurpation, because they are 
accustomed to disregard appeals from that quarter, let them at 
least, for their own sake and that of their children, whose rights 
and liberties are imperiled, cease this violent, unconstitutional, and 
revolutionary legislation, which can bring only evil upon the 
country, the whole country; for the man must be a stark fool who 
cannot see that, however strong the disposition to limit the opera- 
tion of this bill to the southern States, it will inevitably and 
inexorably extend its deadly influence over the whole land. 

I feel, Mr. Speaker, the extraordinary circumstances by which 
I and my southern colleagues find ourselves surrounded on this 
occasion. I feel that I stand here to-day a messenger sent back 
by those who have passed through the bitter waters of a Dead sea, 
to warn their more fortunate brethren who have not yet reached 
its shores of what awaits them in its passage, and to arrest their 
footsteps. It will be well with them if they heed the warning. But 
if they do not, if they will persist in their blind march into the 
region of political darkness and death, we will at least have the 
satisfaction of knowing that the calamities which surely await them 
arc in no wise chargeable to us. 
***** * * *♦» 

Now, Mr. Speaker, I shall bring my remarks to a close, and 
in doing so I desire to address myself to gentlemen who contem- 
plate voting for this measure. The people of those States which 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 87 

gentlemen seem to take pleasure in designating as "the States lately 
in rebellion," people whom gentlemen still continue to denominate 
"rebels" in this sixth year of peace, are quite accustomed to military 
rule, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the like. It 
is no new thing to them. Bad and disgraceful as it is to American 
civilization, it is better than some of the so-called civil governments 
which have existed in those States. If your eagerness to secure 
the blessings of that kind of government is so great that you cannot 
be happy until it is established everywhere throughout the country, 
perhaps, those of us who have experienced those blessings ought 
not to be so selfish as to oppose your equal participation in them. 
It is barely possible, after all, that under the influence of a 
catholic spirit the southern people may rejoice with you in the 
accomplishment of your purpose. But I serve notice on you now 
and here, before the American people, that when your purpose is 
accomplished, when by a reckless violation of the Constitution of 
your country, in order to carry elections and to maintain a party 
in power, you shall have delivered over your constituents, bound 
hand and foot, to the mercy of a military despot, and cannot turn 
your frightened gaze toward those upon whom you have so long 
been accustomed to lay your burdens, and pile upon their bowed 
heads this last load of crime and folly. 



IN DEFENSE OF THE LOYAL MEN OF THE 
SOUTH. 



(Extract from an address by Robert B. Elliott, of South Caro- 
lina, in the House of Representatives, April ist, 1871.) 
***** * * *** 

I do not wish to be understood as speaking for the colored 
man alone when I demand instant protection for the loyal men of 
the South. No, sir, my demand is not so restricted. In South 
Carolina alone, at the last election, twelve thousand of the working 
white men in good faith voted the Republican ticket, openly 



88 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE. 

arraying themselves on the side of free government This class- 
has discovered that the same beneficent system that emancipates 
the laborer of the one race secures the freedom of the other. They 
understand that the shackle that bound the arms of the black man 
threw a deep shadow on the path of the laboring white. The white 
Republican of the South is also hunted down and murdered or 
scourged for his opinion's sake, and during the past two years 
more than six hundred loyal men of both races have perished in 
my State alone. 

Yet, sir, it is true that these masked murderers strike chiefly 
at the black race. And here I say that every southern gentleman 
should blush with shame at this pitiless and cowardly persecution 
of the negro. If the former master will yield no obedience to the 
laws of the land, he should at least respect the claims of common 
gratitude. To him I say that the negro, whom you now term a 
barbarian, unfit for and incapable of self-government, treated you 
in the day of your weakness with a forbearance and magnanimity 
unknown before in the history of a servile population. In the dark 
days of the war, when your strong men were far to the front, the 
negro, with no restraint save his own self-control, tilled your fields 
and kept watch and ward over your otherwise unprotected dwell- 
ings. He guarded the person of your wife, the chastity of your 
daughter, and the helpless infancy of your children. Nobly sup- 
pressing the manhood that burned within him, he learned "to labor 
and to wait," and exhibited through all his weary years of sufifering 
and unrequited toil — 

"That calm reliance upon God 

For justice in His own good time. 

That gentleness to which belongs 

Forgiveness for its many wrongs." 
And how do you requite him now? Be it said to the shame of 
your boasted chivalry among men of honor in every land, simply 
because he exercises his privileges as an American freeman, you 
would drive him into exile with the pitiless lash or doom him to 
swift murder, seeking your revenge for political power lost by 
moving at midnight along the path of the assassin! 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 89 

It is the custom, sir, of Democratic journals to stigmatize the 
negroes of the South as being in a semi-barbarous condition; but 
pray tell me, who is the barbarian here, the murderer or his victim? 
I fling back in the teeth of those who make it this most false and 
foul aspersion upon the negro of the southern States. I thank God 
that in the darkest chapters in the history of my race there is no 
such record as that unfolded by the dread annals that tell the story 
of the long-protracted horrors of Andersonville. 

I trust, sir, that this bill will pass quickly, and be quickly 
enforced. History teaches us that the adequate policy is the best. 
In one section of the Union crime is stronger than law. Murder, 
unabashed, stalks abroad in many of the southern States. If you 
cannot now protect the loyal men of the South, then have the loyal 
people of this great republic done and suffered much in vain, and 
your free Constitution is a mockery and a snare. 

It is recorded that on the entry of Louis XVHI. into Paris, 
after the fall of the great Napoleon, an old marshal of the empire 
who stood in the vast throng, unknown, was addressed by an 
ardent Bourbon who expatiated on the gorgeous splendors that 
marked the scene, and exclaimed: "Is this not grand? Is it not 
magnificent? What is there wanting to the occasion?" "Noth- 
ing," said the war-worn veteran, as his mind wandered over Lodi 
and Wagram and Austerlitz, and the hundred other fields of victory 
where he struck beneath the eagles of his now fallen chief. 
"Nothing," he answered with tremulous voice; "nothing is wanting 
to the occasion but the presence of the brave men who died to 
prevent it." 

Such, sir, will be the bitter reflection of all loyal men in this 
nation, if the Democratic party shall triumph in the States of the 
South through armed violence. 



90 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

ENFORCEMENT OF FOURTEENTH 
AMENDMENT. 



(Extracts from an address delivered by Hon. Joseph H. Rainey, 
of South Carolina, in the House of Representatives, April 1st, 

1871.) 

Mr. Speaker, in approaching the subject now under considera- 
tion, I do so with a deep sense of its magnitude and importance, 
and in full recognition of the fact that a remedy is needed to meet 
the evil now existing in most of the southern States, but especially 
in that one which I have the honor to represent in part, the State 
of South Carolina. The enormity of the crimes constantly per- 
petrated there finds no parallel in the history of this republic in her 
very darkest days. There was a time when the early settlers of 
New England were compelled to enter the fields, their homes, even 
the very sanctuary itself, armed to the full extent of their means. 
While the people were offering their worship to God within those 
humble walls, their voices kept time with the tread of the sentry 
outside. But, sir, it must be borne in mind that at the time referred 
to civilization had but just begun its work upon this continent. 
The surroundings were unpropitious, and as yet the grand capabili- 
ties of this fair land lay dormant under the fierce tread of the red 
man. But as civilization advanced with its steady and resistless 
sway, it drove back those wild cohorts and compelled them to give 
way to the march of improvement. In course of time superior 
intelligence made its impress and established its dominion upon 
this continent. That intelligence, with an influence like that of the 
sun rising in the east and spreading its broad rays like a garment 
of light, gave life and gladness to the dark and barbaric land of 
America. 

Surely, sir, it were but reasonable to hope that this sacred 
influence should never have been overshadowed, and that in the 
history of other nations, no less than in our own past, we might find 
beacon-lights for our guidance. In part this has been realized, and 
might have reached the height of our expectations if it had not been 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 91 

for the blasting effects of slavery, whose deadly pall has so long 
spread its folds over this nation, to the destruction of peace, union, 
and concord. Most particularly has its baneful influence been felt 
in the South, causing the people to be at once restless and discon- 
tented. Even now, sir, after the great conflict between slavery and 
freedom, after the triumph achieved at such a cost, we can yet 
see the traces of the disastrous strife and the remains of disease in 
the body-politic of the South. In proof of this, witness the frequent 
outrages perpetrated upon our loyal men. The prevailing spirit 
of the Southron is either to rule or to ruin. Voters must perforce 
succumb to their wishes or else risk life itself in the attempt to 
maintain a simple right of common manhood. 

The suggestions of the shrewdest Democratic papers have 
proved unavailing in controlling the votes of the loyal whites and 
blacks of the South. Their innuendoes have been evaded. The 
people emphatically decline to dispose of their rights for a mess of 
pottage. In this particular the Democracy of the North found 
themselves foiled and their money needless. But with a spirit more 
demon-like than that of a Nero or a Caligula, there has been con- 
cocted another plan, destructive, aye, diabolical in its character, 
worthy only of hearts without regard for God or man, fit for such 
deeds as those deserving the name of men would shudder to per- 
form. Is it asked, what are those deeds? Let those who liberally 
contributed to the supply of arms and ammunition in the late re- 
bellious States answer the question. Soon after the close of the 
war there had grown up in the South a very widely-spread willing- 
ness to comply with the requirements of the law. But as the 
clemency and magnanimity of the general government became 
manifest, once again did the monster rebellion lift his hydra head 
in renewed defiance, cruel and cowardly, fearing the light of day, 
hiding itself under the shadow of the night as more befitting its 
bloody and accursed work. 

I need not, Mr. Speaker, recite here the murderous deeds com- 
mitted both in North and South Carolina. I could touch the 
feelings of this House by the story of widows and orphans now 
wandering amid the ravines of the rural counties of my native State 



92 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

seeking protection and maintenance from others who are yet unable, 
on account of their own poverty, to grant them aid. I could dwell 
upon the sorrows of poor women, with their helpless infants, cast 
upon the world, homeless and destitute, deprived of their natural 
protectors by the red hand of the midnight assassin. I could 
appeal to you, members upon this floor, as husbands and fathers, 
to picture to yourselves the desolation of your own happy firesides 
should you be suddenly snatched away from your loved ones. Think 
of gray-haired men, whose four score years are almost numbered, 
the venerated heads of peaceful households, without warning mur- 
dered for political opinion's sake. 
****** * * ** 

Could I exhume the murdered men and women of the South, 
Mr. Speaker, and array their ghastly forms before your eyes, I 
should not need remove the mantle from them, because their very 
presence would appeal, in tones of plaintive eloquence, which would 
be louder than a million tongues. They could indeed — 

"A tale unfold whose lightest word 

Would harrow up thy soul." 
****** * * ** 

In the dawn of our freedom our young republic was widely 
recognized and proudly proclaimed to the world the refuge, the 
safe asylum of the oppressed of all lands. Shall it be said that at 
this day, through mere indifference and culpable neglect, this grand 
boast of ours is become a mere form of words, an utter fraud? I 
earnestly hope not! And yet, if we stand with folded arms and 
idle hands, while the cries of our oppressed brethren sound in our 
ears, what will it be but a proof to all men that we are utterly unfit 
for our glorious mission, unworthy of our noble privileges, as the 
greatest of republics, the champions of freedom for all men? I 
would that every individual man in this whole nation could be 
aroused to a sense of his own part and duty in this great question. 
When we call to mind the fact that this persecution is waged against 
men for the simple reason that they dare to vote with the party 
which has saved the Union intact by the lavish expenditure of blood 
and treasure, and has borne the nation safely through the fearful 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 



93 



crisis of these last few years, our hearts swell with an overwhelming 

indignation. 

****** * * ** 

In most of the arguments to which I have listened the positions 
taken are predicated upon the ground of the unconstitutionality 
of the bill introduced by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Shella- 
barger). For my part, I am not prepared, Mr. Speaker, to argue 
this question from a constitutional standpoint alone. I take the 
ground that, in my opinion, lies far above the interpretation put 
upon the provisions of the Constitution. I stand upon the broad 
plane of right; I look to the urgent, the importunate demands of 
the present emergency; and while I am far from advocating any 
step not in harmony with that sacred law of our land, while I 
would not violate the lightest word of that chart which has so well 
guided us in the past, yet I desire that so broad and liberal a con- 
struction be placed upon its provisions as will insure protection to 
the humblest citizen, without regard to rank, creed, or color. Tell 
me nothing of a constitution which fails to shelter beneath its 
rightful power the people of a country! 

I believe when the fathers of our country framed the Constitution 
they made the provisions so broad that the humblest, as well as the 
loftiest citizen, could be protected in his inalienable rights. It was 
designed to be, and is, the bulwark of freedom, and the strong 
tower of defense, against foreign invasion and domestic violence. 
I desire to direct your attention to what is embodied in the pre- 
amble, and would observe that it was adopted after a liberal and 
protracted discussion on every article composing the great Ameri- 
can Magna Charta. And like a keystone to an arch it made the 
work complete. Here is what it declares: 

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more 
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide 
for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure 
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain 
and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." 

If the Constitution which we uphold and support as the funda- 
mental law of the United States is inadequate to afford security to 



94 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

life, liberty, and property— if, I say, this inadequacy is proven, there 
its work is done, then it should no longer be recognized as the 
Magna Charta of a great and free people; the sooner it is set aside 
the better for the liberties of the nation. 
^***** * * ** 

I say to the gentlemen of the opposition, and to the entire 

membership of the Democratic party, that upon your hands rests 

the blood of the loyal men of the South. Disclaim it as you will, 

the stain is there to prove your criminality before God and the 

world in the day of retribution, which will surely come. I pity the 

man or party of men who would seek to ride into power over the 

dead body of a legitimate opponent. 
****** * * ** 

If the country there is impoverished, it has certainly not been 
caused by the fault of those who love the Union, but it is simply 
the result of a disastrous war madly waged against the best govern- 
ment known to the world. The murder of unarmed men and the 
maltreating of helpless women can never make restitution for the 
losses which are the simply inevitable consequence of the rebellion. 
The faithfulness of my race during the entire war, in supporting and 
protecting the families of their masters, speaks volumes in their 
behalf as to the real kindliness of their feelings toward the white 
people of the South. 

In conclusion, sir, I would say that it is in no spirit of bitterness 
against the southern people that I have spoken to-day. There are 
many among them for whom I entertain a profound regard, having 
known them in former and brighter days of their history. I have 
always felt a pride in the prestige of my native State, noted as she 
has been for her noble sons, with their lofty intellect or tried 
statesmanship. But it is not possible for me to speak in quiet and 
studied words of those unworthy her ancient and honorable name, 
who at this very day are doing all they can do to deface her fair 
records of the past and bring the old State into disrepute. 

I can say for my people that we ardently desire peace for our- 
selves and for the whole nation. Come what will, we are fully 
determined to stand by the Republican party and the government. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 95. 

As to our fate, "we are not wood, we are not stone," but men, with 
feelings and sensibilities like other men whose skin is of a 
lighter hue. 

When myself and colleagues shall leave these halls and turn ou- 
footsteps toward our southern homes we know not but that the 
assassin may await our coming, as marked for his vengeance. 
Should this befall, we would bid Congress and our country to 
remember that 'twas — 

"Bloody treason flourish'd over us." 

Be it as it may, we have resolved to be loyal and firm, "and if 
we perish, we perish!" I earnestly hope the bill will pass. 



THE NATION MUST PROTECT HER CITIZENS. 



(Extracts from an address by Hon. Ellis H. Roberts, of New 
York, delivered in the House of Representatives, April 3rd, 1871.) 

****** * :^ *:)« 

In SO grave an emergency people naturally turn to the govern- 
ment for help. In the present case the wronged and outraged 
victims appeal to the republic, for fidelity to which they are abused. 
So serious are the difficulties, that every human resource should 
be employed to afford relief. Every American citizen turns 
instinctively to that power which was ordained "to establish justice, 
insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty." 
They look to Congress "to provide for the common defense and 
general welfare of the United States." This is a nation, and in no 
nook or cranny of its domain is there a spot where the national 
aegis does not cover the humblest of its citizens. So much is 
guaranteed in the clause of the Constitution that "no State shall 
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United 
States;" and statutes may rightfully so provide, and may be en- 
forced by every proper means. The present violence is directly 
aimed to break down, not only national law, but the recent amend- 
ments to the national Constitution. Shall it be conceded that these 



96 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

are all a mere brutum fulmen? May we create citizens and not 
protect them? Does the Constitution enfranchise a race, only to 
consign it helplessly to wrong and outrage and murder? 

No, Mr. Speaker, the constitutional power exists to protect the 
citizens of the republic. Upon that branch of the subject the 
arguments of the chairman of the select committee, the eminent 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Shellabarger), and of the other dis- 
tinguished gentlemen who have followed him on this side, are 
unanswered and unanswerable. And the argument of the gentleman 
from South Carolina (Mr, Elliott) and his appeal shame the ability 
and patriotism of the minority of this House. 

The doctrine of State sovereignty is proclaimed anew. The 
chief of the "lost cause," Jefiferson Davis, at Selma, Alabama, in 
the month of March, just passed, in the midst of popular applause, 
"expressed the hope that he would yet live to see the sovereignty 
of the State vindicated," and predicted that it would ultimately 
triumph. Concede that sovereignty, and Alabama must cease its 
outrages upon citizens of other States domiciled within her borders. 
Against the plea of State rights to cover the butchery of citizens, 
the same State rights protest. Citizens of New York seeking homes 
in South Carolina and Alabama have had their roofs burned over 
them and have been driven away by violence. Yes; citizens of New 
York are victims of these outrages. And if State rights are to be 
set up, I insist upon the claim of the Empire State, that its citizens 
shall have all privileges and immunities of citizens in every State of 
this Union. And for the security of those privileges and immuni- 
ties I appeal to all the power of the national government. 

And there are ethics which underlie and inspire and interpret 
constitutions. Obligations are mutual. Allegiance presupposes 
protection. The chief sovereignty guarantees that, and failure any- 
where it must correct. Nothing can so weaken the life of a govern- 
ment as even to seem to neglect its citizens. No higher duty can 
exist than to protect them. Be they white or black, they must 
have free speech, a free ballot, and a safe home. Born here or 
there, beside the lakes or the gulf, beyond the seas or under the 
shadow of the Capitol, once a citizen, however humble, he may 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 97 

claim the protection of the laws. The carpet-bag has been made 
the pretext of slaughter; let it become the symbol of the expulsion 
of the new barbarism. The American must travel, must be free to 
move. That freedom has made the wealth and greatness of our 
territories. It has chosen our remotest rivers for its daily pathway. 
It burrows in the mines of Nevada as naturally as it saunters on 
Broadway. Its white plume waves on the Sierras and penetrates 
the forests of the farthest north. The carpet-bag is the sign of the 
vitality of our people. You may possibly limit the Russian to the 
hamlet of his birth; to the American the continent belongs. He 
carries his nationality with him. He will be protected in the harbor 
of Constantinople, and he will be delivered from British prisons 
on a simple certificate of naturalization. So he must be protected 
where the magnolia blooms and the cotton bursts its bolls; where 
the orange tree and the sugar cane woo the sun, as well as where 
the maize lifts its spears and the early snows bring their mantle of 
peace. 

History, indeed, is conclusive that mere severity is not states- 
manship. Elizabeth and Cecil tried harsh measures upon Ireland, 
and their example has been long followed by their successors. Sir 
Henry Sidney had overrun four provinces, had blown up castles, 
and harried towns, and as Froude says, "it was the way of a bird in 
the air, the way of a ship upon the sea, the way of a serpent upon the 
rock." For a single emergency armies serve a purpose; for per- 
manent government the iron hand is always a failure. The best 
brains of England have failed to make it successful in India, in 
Ireland, anywhere. We have tried it with our Indians, and it has 
failed. You may annihilate communities, you may make the country 
a desert, as parts of India and of Ireland have been — swept clean as 
a threshing-floor. 

But our danger is not in that direction. 

Run over in your mind, Mr. Speaker, the assaults made upon 
the principles involved in this bill. We have heard from the ablest 
constitutional lawyers on the Democratic side of the House, from 
their ablest reasoners. What have they told us? Let me do them 



98 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

entire justice and extend to them full courtesy. They have vouch- 
safed to us very little of legal or constitutional argument, but a 
great deal of denunciation of the Republican party. They have 
touched very little upon the sacred rights of the citizen, and the 
grand obligations of government by the people, but they have had 
much to say about who may and who may not come back to this 
hall. They forget there has been a war and a victory. They 
reproduce the old prejudices of pro-slavery days, and they still 
assume that the rule of violence beneath a southern sun is chivalry. 

Did you observe, too, the chaste wit with which on Saturday 
the attempt was made to belittle the sufferings of the southern 
people? The same men were wont to ridicule "bleeding Kansas." 
Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. It is Democratic statesman- 
ship to chuckle and to laugh over the mutilation and murder of 
American citizens. 

To men to whom these things appear seemly it may seem 
decent also to denounce as tyranny the legislation which has 
enfranchised a race and saved a republic. But, step by step, our 
opponents have learned the lessons which the Republican party 
has taught them. The effort to render freedom national and 
slavery sectional was quite as radical and as dangerous, our enemies 
being witnesses, as is the present bill. Sir, the glory of the Consti- 
tution was never known until the Republican party demonstrated 
that it meant more than the protection of slavery. Was that 
usurpation? That Constitution has been the true firmament of 
popular liberty; but it was left for this generation, and for you, Mr. 
Speaker, and your party, to set in it the three amendments of 
personal liberty, of equal citizenship, and of a free ballot — the three 
blazing stars in the sword-belt of Orion — to guide political mariners 
forever. This enlargement of equal rights has been the tyranny, 
the usurpation of Congress, approved by the people for the past ten 

years. 

****** * * ** 

Years at best the embers of the strife would smolder. Run the 
plowshare of industry deep among them and turn them under the 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 99 

green turf. Let the showers of material prosperity drench them. 
Then, by patience and by time, they will be transformed into 
productive and beneficent elements of the soil. Now, any mischief- 
maker may rake them up, and they will glow with lurid light and 
with destroying heat. Something may be done by Congress, and 
it must be done efficiently. But the real work must be done at 
home. Laws must be sustained by moral sentiment and personal 
effort must supplement official action. Then not too much march- 
ing of armies will be required. The peace which is to "come to 
stay" must have its home in the hearts of the people. 

And for a like reason amnesty must have a basis in society and 
in feeling on the soil. It is absurd for Congress to remove disabili- 
ties from those who were chiefs in the rebellion, while that very 
class are busy impeaching Republican officials on political pretexts 
and imposing disabilities by the lash, the scourge, the bowie knife, 
and the pistol. Concede protection to loyal men; let citizens be 
rendered safe, not by law and force only, but by mutual alliance 
and friendly purposes, and no limit can be set to the magnanimity 
of the American people and of their Representatives. For, as they 
have demonstrated their heroism by great deeds of conflict, they 
can and will seek peace by methods equally chivalric. But to that 
result co-operation is demanded on the part of all classes of the 
southern people. Good feeling must be reciprocal. 

On the part of Congress the first step has been to pull the mask 
from the face of this monstrous conspiracy and to show it in its 
horrid deformity. The report of the Senate committee has let the 
light in upon a single State, and the Ku Klux sits at the mouth of 
its cave, a Giant Despair, mumbling over the bones of his victims. 
The proposed joint committee will do more work of the same kind; 
and the conspiracy will retreat as it advances. That committee 
will be only the head-light of the national power. It will be well 
if before it the new barbarism will scatter and disappear. For, sure 
as the fiat of God, men, and not masks, are to rule this land. Law 
and administration must enlist to establish civilization, an orderly 
industry, courts open to all, and absolute protection for every 
citizen. With them co-operates every moral influence: books and 



V-, Of 0. 



100 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

journals, human thought and the world's progress. "Day unto day 
uttereth speech." Let the statute you are now considering add its 
educational force. It would be well, indeed, if both parties on this 
floor would unite in declaring that every American citizen has 
about him the panoply of a government of forty million people 
pledged to each other's defense in every legal right. If that may 
not be, at all events let the majority of this House, of both Houses, 
record in law the sacred obligation of personal protection to every 
inhabitant, and appeal to every moral and beneficent influence to 
join with us in the crusade of peace. 

We have a right to ask the Democratic party to withhold its 
insidious poison, to cease its instigations to violence, to stop the 
devices for "firing the southern heart," to bid its partisans obey 
the laws. We have a right to counsel all classes at the South, for 
their own sake and for the honor of the Union, to trample out 
lawlessness and do the works of peace. And we rely now, as in the 
long, dark days, upon the Republican party to arouse the national 
conscience, to stiffen popular determination, to consecrate all moral 
influences and all the power of the government, to protect the weak 
and the defenseless, and to maintain and perpetuate the equal rights 
of every citizen by secure liberty under law. 



TENNESSEE INVITES CAPITAL. 



(Extract from an address delivered by Hon. John M. Bright, of 
Tennessee, in the House of Representatives, April 3rd, 1871.) 

The Representative from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelley), from his 
tour through the South in 1867, seemed to imagine that the very 
soil was burning with rebellion, and that the air was shimmering 
with stifling heat, and he concluded that northern men and northern 
capital could not venture there in safety. Capital is calculating and 
timid, and just such speeches as his are repressing the outflow of 
the redundant capital of the North. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. M 

I can say that northern men, who were northern soldiers, with 
northern capital, with Republican politics, have erected woolen 
mills, the dull thunder of whose looms reverberates day and night 
thi-nigh the streets of my own quiet village. Our mountain gates 
in East Tennessee stand open wide. The great basin of Middle 
Tennessee, with its blue mountain rim on the east and the Tennessee 
river as a water-belt on the west, with a soil exuberant in the pro- 
duction of all the grasses, cereals and staples, and West Tennessee, 
alike remarkable in fertility, and washed by the Father of Waters 
•on the west, all stand open to the influx of honest industry, capital, 
and improvement in useful arts. Her quarries of marble, her beds 
of copper, of iron, and of coal, exist in mountain masses; aye, her 
coal-beds are sufficient to feed the smelting furnaces of the nation. 
The renown of Lowell will pale before her water-powers, whose 
roar, unheeded for ages, has been calling to be apprenticed to the 
servitude of machinery. All are welcome to come with their cap- 
ital, to be of us and affiliate with us, but not to make war upon us. 

I regret that I am called upon to notice the invidious comparison 
of the same Representative between the metropolitan refinements 
of the laboring class of his constituents, whose dwellings are lighted 
with gas and who have the convenience of hot and cold-water 
baths, and the southern laboring men, who live in humble homes 
and are denied the conveniences of his constituents. 

Let me remind the honorable gentleman that, while I do not 
represent much of the ornamental part of society, I do represent 
in the main a brave, intelligent, virtuous, and hospitable peasantry, 
who, in common with the same class scattered through the rural 
districts everywhere, constitute the bone and sinevv- of the republic. 

It is sometimes the case that the country has to deplore the 
decay of her men, amid the increase of her wealth: 

''111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 

Where wealth accumulates and men decay. 

Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, 

A breath can make them, as a breath has made; 

But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, ; 

When once destroyed, can never be supplied." 



102 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 



AN APPEAL FOR MAGNANIMITY TOWARD THE 

SOUTH. 



(Extract from an address of Hon. John M. Bright, of Tennessee, 
delivered in the House of Representatives, April 3rd, 1871.) 

But grant me a word, not to harrow, but to heal. The South 
regarded the government as sectionalized in the election of Presi- 
dent Lincoln. The ship of State careened and drifted upon the 
dark cliff of American slavery. The shock precipitated many of us 
overboard, and how the craft was shattered we all know too well. 

Although war generally executes its own judgments (and how 
terribly they fell upon the South none but they do know); yet 
Congress has continued to afflict us with rapid installments of 
vengeance. More than one hundred thousand of our southern sons 
lie sleeping on the battlefield; our maimed and wounded soldiers 
hobble on their crutches unpensioned by a friendly government; 
our land was ravaged, burned, and blackened with desolation, as 
if swept with a "whirlwind of fire;" famine breathed through her 
shriveled lips misery upon the children of poverty and want; our 
State authorities disfranchised the mass of our citizens, and, in 
some instances, drove from the ballot box the old pioneers who 
had driven out the savages, and had wrestled with the old oaks of 
the forest to subdue the country for the coming generations. 

The Federal Government came and partitioned the country into 
military districts, dismantled some of the Legislatures, expelled 
the judiciary, dishabilitated the citizens, and dragged the rugged 
harrow of reconstruction through the bowels of our State Constitu- 
tions. Some of the States were denied representation in the Elec- 
toral College for President, and some were held off in political 
quarantine and denied representation in Congress until they adopted 
the fourteenth amendment, old Virginia among the number. Yes, 
old Virginia, who, when ancient liberty was to be won, furnished 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 103 

a Henry to thunder in her forum, a Washington to roll the tide of 
war, successive Presidents to guide the helm, and brought as dowry 
to the Union the vast domain in the West out of which have grown 
up giant States like children around her feet. Surely western 
Representatives will not forget that they have a mother, and surely 
will not vote for her further humiliation. 

Nearly every act of Congress has a sting for the southern man. 
When, willing to bury the memories of the past, he treads his way 
into the far West, upon the rough and perilous edge of Indian 
warfare, even there he finds the sectional presence of his govern- 
ment, denying him the benefit of the homestead unless he can take 
the test-oath. 

The old soldier in our second war of independence, who fol- 
lowed General Jackson, who, in the language of a great statesman 
of Tennessee — "Silenced the roar of the British lion on the plains of 
New Orleans, and the American eagle took its loftiest flight and 
uttered its loudest note of exultant liberty" — these old soldiers now 
come and hold out their hands, trembling with the palsy of age and 
want, and ask the pittance of a pension in remembrance of an 
ancient debt of gratitude, and they are refused unless they can pass 
the purgatorial ordeal. 

We have not only felt the linger, but the pressure of the loin of 
the government upon us. We have been war-ridden, tax-ridden, 
debt-ridden, poverty-ridden, league-ridden, Ku-Klux-ridden, militia- 
ridden. State-ridden, Congress-ridden; and now to be President- 
ridden, with the halter of the habeas corpus, and his military rowels 
dashed into our lacerated flanks, it would overleap all the bounds 

of mercy. 

Let me assure the Republicans that they are greatly abused by 
the mendacious rumors of oppression which come pealing to them 
from the South. As the keeper of the lion rowels him up in his 
cage with his iron bar until he provokes a defiant growl, so some 
political miscreant may gall the rebel to utter a murmur, which 
enters a sort of Dionysius ear, reaching from Congress into the 
South, and as it travels it swells into appalling thunder as it opens 



104 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

into the hall of Congress. And then you begin to cry out "Re- 
bellion!" "Reconstruction!" and all your resentments flare up to- 
ward the South like the quills of the porcupine. 

Let me appeal to you of the North to dignify your great triumph 
over your southern brethren with magnanimity and mercy. Cease 
to play with the thunders, change your line of policy, expunge your 
sectional legislation, and strike the fetters from your disfranchised 
brethren. Let us, North and South, bring our sectional prejudices 
and sacrifice them as burnt ofiferings on the common altar of our 
country. Let the compassion of Congress be stretched out like the 
wings of a mighty angel and shake the odors of forgiveness on the 
land. Let us try and imitate the sublime divinity of Him who, 
with the gall upon His lips, looked up to Heaven through His crown 
of thorns and invoked the benediction of forgiveness on His foes. 
Then our land will have rest; then will we have universal peace, 
brotherhood, and prosperity. 



A DEFENSE OF THE CARPET-BAGGER. 



(Extract from an address of Hon. George C. McKee, of Missis- 
sippi, delivered in the House of Representatives, April 3rd, 1871.) 

***** * * >!=** 

The opposition have dealt heavily in assertions and (•r^'^nnciations 
against the Republican party, and especially against sfjuih' -n Re- 
publicans. Even the very able and, generally, very courteous 
gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Beck) makes a stump speech which 
would delight any half-way reasonable Ku Klux; and he particularly 
denounces the "carpet-baggers," as he is pleased to denominate 
those who settled in the South from the North. I did expect such 
puerilities from certain other gentlemen, but not from him. It 
seems to me that one who brought his fillibeg and empty sporran 
all the way from Scotland to Kentucky might pardon a native 
citizen who simply removes from one part of his country to another. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 105 

I came to Mississippi during the war. I came beneath the con- 
quering flag of my country, upholding and sustaining it. I live in 
Mississippi because I have the right to do so; and no one can 
gainsay it. And if I had only been there eight months, instead of 
eight years, my right would be the same. All that I have is in 
Mississippi. My property and my interests are there. There my 
hopes of the future are centered. I rejoice in her rejoicings and 
sympathize in her sorrows. In the happy and prosperous days 
which I think and hope are coming to Mississippi in the not far 
distant future, under the auspices of peace and order, I shall claim 
my share of her gladness and her prosperity; and if, which God 
avert, sorrow and disaster should come to Mississippi, though with 
bowed head and sorrowing heart, yet will I not shrink from bearing 
her cross. And to those who talk of driving me and mine out of 
the State, I tell them that my foot is as firm as was the foot of 
McGregor when he trod his native heath. 

Other members of the opposition try another tack, and are 
sonietimes inclined to be soothing, and tell us in dulcet tones of 
the peace and order now reigning in the South. Listen to the 
harmonious voice of the gentleman of Tennessee (Mr. Whitthorne) 
while he tells us that — 

"The whole country is in a state of peace; no more disorder at 
the South than in the North; no more of murder, no more of arson, 
no more of robbery, no more of larceny, no more of outrages, 
committed by persons in disguise." 

Oh, sweet beatitude! Oh, thrice blessed, peaceful elysiuni of 
Memphis! The millennium has arrived! The Prince of Peace has 
surely come to reign among the sweet Ku Klux lambs of Tennessee! 
I congratulate the happy Representatives of that peaceful people. 

I wish that all this were, indeed, true. I would that I could 
believe it. The gentleman with his fertile imagination traces the 
picture as he and I would wish it, but he traces it in fancy's glowing 
dyes; but to me stern truth paints it in darker hues and gives it a 
more somber coloring, and the pages whereon is written the history 
of reconstruction in Tennessee are black with crime and red with 
blood. 



X06 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Behold the dark deeds in North and South Carolina, proved and 
established by the testimony taken. Colored men had been made 
the especial objects of Ku Klux vengeance. They have been driven 
from home, their cabins and school-houses burned, their little 
possessions destroyed, and they themselves have been shot in the 
highway and hunted like wild beasts in the swamp; guilty of no 
crime, charged with no offense except loyalty and Republicanism, 
violating no law, and yet they are scourged and shot and hung by 
the infamous Klan because God had made them t)lack and Repub- 
licans had made them free. 

Why do we hesitate to protect them? How much longer shall 
we wait? Every breeze that blows from the South wafts to our 
dull ears the stories of outrage and wrong. When the Waldenses, 
persecuted on account of their religion, were slaughtered among 
their native Alps, in a far-off land, blind John Milton stirred the 
iron heart of Cromwell and all the Commonwealth of England into 
action by his stern lyric: 

"Avenge, O Lord! Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold." 

Oh, for a tongue or pen like his, which could arouse this nation 
from its "constitutional" timidity and stir it up to duty! 



GRANT NOT A USURPER. 



(Extract from an address by Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, of 
Massachusetts, in the House of Representatives, April 4th, 1871.) 
***** * * *** 

Almost every Democratic orator, when he declaims upon this 
topic, divides his speech into two heads first: First, virulent abuse 
of the humble individual who now addresses the House, because 
he advocates a law to insure safety to life and property, and to 
punish murder and felony, and there they join in full cry of the 
whole pack — 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 107 

"The little dogs and all, 
Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me;" 
And the second head of their discourse is, accusations against the 
President that he desires this law to be passed in order to be able 
to wield military power for his own aggrandizement. 

He is now in the highest position on earth, the elected chief of 
the strongest government and the first and most powerful nation in 
the world. For him there is no higher step in the ladder of fame, 
no higher seat of power, no higher reward than the approbation 
of his countrymen for a nation saved, a government preserved, and 
its liberties transmitted unimpaired to posterity, who shall bless his 
name therefor forever. And they seem to forget that once he held 
more military power, as general of the armies, than could be given 
him by the Congress of the United States if we laid all the nation 
could now command at his feet. 

At the surrender of the braver allies of the Democracy he 
stood at the head of nearly a million and a half of trained soldiers, 
the successful general, who had saved the life of the nation, and he 
had the plaudits of every true and loyal man. If he had desired to 
aggrandize himself by military power, then was his time. But he 
disbanded his army and it melted away, each soldier into a good 
citizen, "like the snow-flake soft falling on the sod," all the better 
citizens for having been good soldiers, and the general himself took 
the position of a subordinate, wnth but a show of military force at 
his command, to execute obediently the orders of the civilian-tailor 
President, who was his not-much-honored chief. 

If unholy ambition ever could tempt him to proclaim himself 
dictator and overturn the frame of government of his country, then 
was his time, not now; and if ever the form of government could 
have been changed by armed soldiers against the wishes of the 
people, it was then, not now. But his w^orst enemy never then 
accused him of the suspicion of such design, and the accusation is 
now made only as a miserable party war-cry of a spiteful and 
unscrupulous opposition. 

If I were to pass criticism upon his administration— and it would 
certainly be the only one to which it is, with any show of justice, 



108 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

open it would be that the President has been too scrupulous in 

keeping the administration of the government too completely within 
the letter of the laws, never by any chance overstepping its bounds, 
although sorely tempted so to do, in order to suppress violence 
and enforce order and peace. Such, indeed, was the animadversion 
made upon it by my colleague (Mr. Dawes) in the debate the other 
day, when, in deploring this state of things in the South, he said, 
substantially, "that we had laws enough on this subject, but the fault 
was one of administration." Be it so; but that is not the fault 
usually attributed to a reckless grasper after power or a seeker to 
overturn the liberties of the people and make himself supreme 
dictator. 

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Morgan), in his speech the other 
day, was kind enough to say that, "If the gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts (Mr. Butler) is not leader here, it was evident that he is 
master somewhere else." 

He does me honor overmuch. I claim no influence or power 
save that of a Representative of the people, striving to do his duty 
without fear or favor, in urging the passage of such laws as in his 
best judgment are for the good of his country. It is the highest 
position to which I can aspire, and one of which I am justly proud. 
Would to God the taunt of the gentleman from Ohio were true! 
That President Grant could, under the laws, and would make me 
"master somewhere else." Oh, for an hour of such power to rule 
the right and suppress the wrong; to save and defend the oppressed 
and down-trodden; to stay and punish the evil-doer. Then, indeed, 
should midnight raider aivi the murderous Ku Klux smiter of 
defenseless women and cliiUlren, and the disguised assassin and 
burner of quiet men's houses hang on the trees like ripe fruit ready 
to be plucked, until every man's rights, however humble, should 
be respected, and every roof tree, however lowly, should be the safe 
castle of refuge for its occupant, from Mason and Dixon's line to 
Mexico. 

We hear many fears expressed lest our bill to punish con- 
spiracies for murder, arson, robbery, and other felonies, when it 
becomes law, shall be used as an instrument for the oppression of 



I 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 109 

the people. No good and just man need fear its provisions. But 
let the wicked conspirators tremble. Every man can escape the 
stringency of its action by remaining a quiet and peaceful citizen, 
and not infringing the rights of person, property, or liberty of 
another, and voting the Democratic ticket only once at one election, 
and suffering his neighbor to exercise freely the same privilege if 
he is so benighted as to wish so to do. Let that be done, and every 
Democrat, rebel, and Ku Klux will be safe from its terrors. It is 
''the wicked who flee when no man pursueth." No hard-working 
and industrious white man or negro at the South, who is laboring 
to support himself, his wife, and family, to lay up his share of the 
three and a half millions of accumulations already deposited by the 
blacks in their savings banks since the war-a greater amount de- 
rived from earnings of their labor since their late masters ceased, 
in part, from robbing them of its products, than the entire bankmg 
capital, outside of their principal cities, invested by the whole 
southern white population since the war-but what^wiU applaud and 
bless our action. 

Gentlemen on the other side of the House threaten us if we pass 
this bill we shall destroy the Republican party; that an outraged and 
indignant people will drive us from our seats. If they believe what 
they say, then why not get out of the way and let us pass it? Why 
filibuster to prevent enactment of this, or, as they declare, a worse 
one from being offered. 

We believe, on the contrary, that an indignant people ought to 
hurl us from our seats, and that the Republican party ought to be 
disbanded, if we are not strong enough to protect the , only people 
in the South who were our friends during the war, save the soldiers 
that we sent to destroy the rebellion. No; every act of opposition 
shows that their leaders well understand that with peace, quiet, 
and observance of the laws in the South comes the end of the 
Democratic party there; and hence their determined and almos 
frantically furious opposition to any law which shall secure that 
consummation. . , 

Again, they exultingly tell us that the Republican party ..weak 
and divided, that our power is waning; and that the Democratpv.ll 



110 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

carry the country in the next presidential election, because of our 
many divisions and dissensions. Let them not "lay that flattering 
unction to their souls." The Republican administration stands 
stronger to-day in its majority of members of this House than any 
other administration at the beginning of its second Congress since 
Jackson's. 

The present Democracy never will learn from the teachings of 
history. They do not seem to understand that every administration, 
having disposed of its offices, having disappointed many of its 
adherents, having the responsibilities of affairs on its hands, always 
seems comparatively weak at the beginning of the third year of its 
power. 

The Republican party is still strong in the affections and con- 
fidence of the people. When the time comes our ranks will be 
serried, our columns closed up. To borrow a simile from a pro- 
fession into which I was thrust for four years by the exigencies of 
public service, let me say to the Democracy that as yet, during this 
administration, the Republican bugle has only sounded the "stable- 
call" to groom the horses and clean the stalls, that we have been 
trying to discipline our camp-followers to brighten the harness and 
polish the guns; not the most pleasant of duties. But when our 
bugle sounds "boots and saddles," every Republican will mount 
ready for the fray, and each squadron will gallop into column eager 
to meet their old foes. When trumpet rings our "Charge!" we shall 
dash forward as one man to the music of the good old tune of — 
"John Brown's body lies moldering in the ground. 
But his soul is marching on." 
And the dismayed and discomfited allied army of the Democracy, 
rebels, and Ku Klux Klans will again go down before us as of yore 
did the hordes of the Saracens before the onslaught of the knights 
of Richard the Lion-Hearted. 

At the conclusion of the address of Mr. Butler, Mr. Cox, of 
New York, made an extended speech, beginning as follows: 

Mr. Speaker, we have just been listening to a very extraordinary 
speech. It consisted of a philippic against the South, and a good 
deal of exaggeration about southern outrages. There was also a 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. Ill 

good deal of gratuitous advice given to the Democratic party. We 
did not ask for it. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Butler) 
is the chartered libertine of debate in this House. He has indulged 
to-day, malice-prepense, in an inflammatory harangue against 
violence, and yet he is the most violent man in this House. He has 
given us a speech in which there is not a single glimpse of 
benevolence to irradiate the gloom of its vindicative invective. He 
has, in his close, defended his party. It needs it. His ability as a 
lawyer might have made this debate interesting. But he only 
opened a door for a most undisciplined rabble of unproven state- 
ments and rumors. He appears here as the oracle of persecuted 
virtue, and yet he would infiame every heart with his own venge- 
ance. He has already issued a "polluted philippic" against this side, 
charging us with murder and what not. Now he hurls the same at 
the heads of half the nation. 

If this bill be, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Garfield) says, 
outside the Constitution, it is a provision for pillage and massacre; 
but they are disguised by the solemnities of law. That excites in 
the gentleman from Massachusetts no compunction, but the wild 
conduct of an oppressed people gives him undisguised horror. He 
should remember that when our laws are violative of the Constitu- 
tion they lead to rapine and murder, and no less but more heinous 
is the crime when done under the guise of law. He forgets what 
Mackintosh has said. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Butler) comes under 
this category. He is full of contentions. He is an enemy of the 
State. He kindleth coals of discontent. I know no one so thor- 
oughly guilty as a public enemy. 

He asked, Mr. Speaker, for one hour to have control of the 
executive department and of the army and navy. What for? To 
help the right and put down the -wrong? Oh! The American 
people may have fallen from step to step into a large and gaping 
abyss in their politics, but they have not yet fallen to that lower 
abyss when the responsible powers of the executive will ever be 
confided to the gentleman from Massachusetts. 



112 ' ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

He would like to lead an army of mercenaries, demagogues, and 
fanatics against the southern people. As the Speaker once said, 
the gentleman was in the fore front of the worst wing of secession. 
I do not know but that if he went out with such an army he would 
do as they are now doing in France, fraternize with those against 
whom he marched out to fight. (Laughter.) 

He hurls his philippics, based upon thousand-tongued rumor, 
against better men than himself. He hurls them against men like 
Senator Davis, of Kentucky, and, in defiance of the rules of the 
House, abuses him not only for his age, but for something else. 
We all understand the motives of that abuse from the gentleman. 



AN APPEAL FOR MODERATION. 



(Extract from an address delivered by Hon. S. S. Cox, of New 
York, in the House of Representatives, April 4th, 1871.) 

I will not say, Mr. Speaker, that this reach of power, beyond 
all the requirements of the time, and to meet extravagant allega- 
tions of disorder, is inspired by unworthy motives. I will not 
charge upon the gentleman from Ohio any sinister design in seeking 
thus to aggrandize power in the hands of our military executive. That 
official may or may not be contemplating an invasion of our system 
by the mailed hand; and yet this bill may be the velvet glove over 
it for ulterior purposes. My duty is within the effects of the bill. 
I say that there is never, under any conceivable set of circumstances, 
any authority to break our oaths or the organic law, to suppress 
any local disorders. 

The inexperienced and profligate governments South, so long as 
they are inspired by ignorance and rapacity, will meet open and 
secret enemies. This bill will intensify such enmity until Mexico 
shall appear in all her chaos within our borders. But I do say, on 
my responsibility here, and if it was the last word I had to breathe 
about public afifairs, that these disorders can never be eradicated 
while federal patronage and executive ambition feed those disorders. 




s. s. cox. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 113 

By all the lessons I have culled from history as to the wrongs 
of the people; by all the graces which in better governments pacified 
the unresting populations after civil wars; by all the worst that can 
happen where a proud and intelligent race are subordinated to their 
inferiors; by the perils which belong to secret and smothered hate 
and revenge; by the common love we bear to our venerable institu- 
tions; by the hopes of the millions yet, I trust, to call these institu- 
tions blessed, I beseech gentlemen to pause before they add more 
and more to the grievances, whether real or imaginary, which are 
the procreant cause of these civil disorders. 

Gentlemen of the dominant party here, I call on you to pause! 
Already the power is slipping from your grasp. Do not teach 
bloody instructions for your successors to follow. Teach us that 
gentleness and moderation which I hope to see pursued when your 
opponents shall have control. 

Do you not perceive that your neglect of pressing duties here, 
within your admitted province of legislation, is preparing your 
political shroud? Do you not see that your taxes, so inordinate, 
and your prodigalities so corrupt, your failure to revive commerce, 
and other objects of great utility are preparing your graves? Know 
that the Connecticut election, so triumphantly trumpeted here, is 
but a little halt on the grand march. We lose no member here 
by it. If you will put your ear to the ground you will hear the 
tramp, tramp, tramp of the coming Democracy! I beseech you 
not to cripple the powers of the States, which may be your guard 
in som_e perilous hour of that coming party. Lead us not into 
temptation; deliver us from these coming evils, whether open or 
concealed. Do not take from this people that municipal spirit and 
local government which are their birthright and their safeguard. 

Yet such, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen, is the effect of this 
measure. It is supported here without authentic proof. It is sup- 
ported on evidence inadequate to prove a debt, yet it is potential 
to deprive a nation of its municipal and civil rights. It is supported 
on evidence too ridiculous to convict of the lowest offense, yet it 
is used to support a charge on which the liberties and rights of a 
great nation are to be imperiled. It is monstrous to blast the fame 



114 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

of one-half of our people to enslave them all. Gentlemen, I pray 
you to pause. You are on the brink. Your legislation will re- 
bound. Save, oh! save us the possible, probable, nay, certain, 
horrors to follow the execution of such laws by an irresponsible 
will. Save yourselves; aye, save your party. It has many en- 
nobling memories; it has in its midst many gallant men; it has 
enrolled many splendid statesmen. Many of them have already 
deserted its flag, but still you number gentlemen, statesmen, and 
Christians. They ornament your ranks. But I beseech you to 
remember that there is no honor in pursuing with vengeance a 
discontented people. Cut yourselves not off entirely from one-half 
of our nation. You will then flourish no longer; for, as Brougham 
once said, "the blossom dies when severed from the root and 
stem." Save your country as an entirety, that you may continue 
to adorn it. Save the Constitution, without which the Union is not 
a band of States, but the emblem of a roving banditti. 

Has that instrument lost all its wholesome terror? Is it like 
the battle-ax of Richard Coeur de Lion, referred to by the gentleman 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Butler), too great for our modern pigmies 
to wield, a relic for the sanctuary, an object only of reverence for 
what it was, more honorable in its rust than its edge? For its 
safety I make my humble prayer, first to you, who have the 
temporal power to stay your invasion of the Constitution and the 
flood-tide of blood, faction, and ruin to ensue from the execution 
of this act. But if I fail in this appeal, I then appeal to the throne 
of God for that mercy, in its abundance, which we shall need when 
such vindicative legislation is the law of our land. 



THE KU KLUX A SHAM. 



(Extract from an address of the Hon. W. R. Roberts, of New 
York, in the House of Representatives, April 4th, 1871.) 

***** * * **:K 

Sir, we have been told by a gentleman on the other side that 
civil war exists in a portion of this country, and has existed there 



IN TH^ AMERICAN CONGRESS. 115 

for some years back. Now, sir, this is a very grave fact, if a fact, 
or a very grave falsehood, if a falsehood. Why, sir, it was only 
the other day the Speaker from that chair proclaimed peace through- 
out the length and breadth of his land; proclaimed, in fact, that— 
"He knew not that American alive 
With whom his soul was any jot at odds, 
More than the infant that was yet unborn." 
It is true that there might have been even then a small rod 
pickling for the member from Massachusetts, and that, like Sir 
Boyle Roach, he smelt a rat, floating in the air, saw it, and deter- 
mined to nip him in the bud. Or it might be that visions of San 
Domingo, Grant, Sumner, Baez, and the horticultural commission, 
interviewing snails and other natives, including water-lots ar.d 
water-rats, passed before his mental vision and disturbed his 
peaceful reverie; but, save these, all was peace, gentle, meek-eyed 
peace, as smiling as a lovely morning in May, and as grateful 
to the senses as the perfume arising from citizen Grant's conserva- 
tory. This, sir, was the state of things on the 4th of March last, 
according to our respected Speaker, according to public opinion, 
and according to the evidence on this floor. 

Why, sir, we see all the old places occupied on the Democratic 
side by old and young men of the South; they seem peaceful and 
hearty, and, to judge from appearances, they have all got thoir 
scalps on. No sign of *'Ku Klux" there. At the other side of the 
House we also see men from the South; and this reminds me of a 
story. An Irishman in a strange town stood looking at a vessel 
anchored in the stream, and apparently lost in anxious thought, 
when he was accosted by a searcher after knowledge. "Paddy," 
said he, "where are you from?" "Begor, sir, I'm from everywhere 
but here, and I'll soon be from here, too, sir." (Laughter.) Well. 
sir, they oh the other side, from the South, seem hearty, and, to 
judge from appearances, they have got their scalps on also. No 
sign of Ku Klux there; at least, not on the scalps. All the evidence 
we have got satisfies me that there has been no civil war from 1865 
to March 4th, 1871; and I have seen no evidence that civil war has 
broken out since then. 



li^ ELOQUENCE AND REPiUlTEE 

But, then, sir, we have the assertion of the President that dis- 
orders exist in some of the southern States, and it is only now he 
has found it out. Some of these disturbances are said to have 
occurred in 1865 and 1866; but neither the President, nor the 
Senate, nor the Republican House of Representatives deemed them 
worthy of serious consideration until about the loth of March. 
When they found themselves sinking from the weight of San Do- 
mingo, high tariff monopolies, robbery of the masses to enrich the 
few, land grants, railroad jobs, and public plunder of every con- 
ceivable kind, they felt the necessity of having some cry with which 
to throw dust in the eyes of the people, so as to save the Repub- 
lican party from disintegration and the ruin that assuredly awaits 
it. Groping around with the gentleman from Massachusetts in the 
van, they came bump up against the Ku Klux, and immediately the 
entire party shouted out as with one voice, "We have it, we have 
found it! The terrible Ku Klux are on us, and now we shall 
have the handling of $250,000,000 a year for some time longer." 
And ever since then, sir, we have been surfeited with Ku Klux. It 
has been up in the Senate, with Grant at the head of it. It has been 
in the House, with neither head or tail to it. It has been in San 
Domingo with the "horse marines." It has been North, South, 
East, and West; even the New England school girls have got it. 
(Laughter.) In fact, it has been everywhere; and now we are sick 
and tired of the bald, despicable and transparent sham. 

Sir, I was born on as kindly a soil as God's sun ever shone upon, 
and among a people who love justice and hate oppression. I know, 
from a sad and bitter experience, how laws conceived in prejudice 
and selfishness, and enforced by bad and designing men, can rob 
a people and brand them with crimes of which they are not guilty, 
and, under the plea of serving law and order, drive them to acts 
of desperation and violence. And it may be — nay, the conviction is 
irresistible to my mind — that this bill now before the House is 
presented with a view of arousing the passions of the suffering 
people of the southern States, of forcing them to commit indiscreet 
and violent acts, that Radicalism may have a pretext for further 
violations of the Constitution, and thereby enable the Republican 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 117 

party to hold on to power at the cost of our liberties and all that 
freemen hold dear in life. 

Sir, this dodge may be very ingenious, but it has not the m€rit 
of novelty. It has been tried time and again, from Nero down to 
George III. Ancient history furnishes numerous examples, and 
modern history some very notable ones. There, for instance, was 
the land of Tell, Switzerland; there is the land of Kosciusko, poor, 
partitioned, and strangled Poland; and we need only to look at 
unfortunate Ireland as one of the most significant and remarkable 
of all; remarkable in the means resorted to to crush, rob, and exter- 
minate a people; and significant in their absolute and entire faiture 
to crush out the love of liberty and the yearning for independence 
which a beneficent Creator, for a wise and holy purpose, implanted 
in the heart of man. 

Sir, I am nearly done; time will not permit me to treat this 
momentous question at greater length. I have not entered upon a 
legal discussion of it, as I am not a lawyer; and even if I were, it 
would be unnecessary, as that has been done already with such 
marked ability as to satisfy every impartial mind that this bill is 
subversive of the Constitution of these United States, the only 
authority by which we sit here to pass law^s under its powers and 
within its scope. But, sir, I have spoken my honest convictions, 
prompted by a heart that worships every foot of American soil, 
because it is a free, and a just, and a generous country. It has 
furnished an asylum to me and to millions of my oppressed coun- 
trymen, and her arms have ever been open to receive the victims of 
oppression from every clime; while her guardian spirit. Liberty, 
spreads her heavenly wings over the drooping form of the heart- 
broken exile and whispers in his ears, "Thou art a man; arise K' 
Hope sheds her radiant light upon his pathway to cheer him on 1o 
where nature's goddess, plenty, showers abundance upon his head. 

For these reasons I love America, her laws and her flag. I 
have gazed upon it in other lands until imagination multiplied t1*»e 
stars upon its field of blue an hundred-fold; and as I looked I saw 
upon each star the name of every nation on the globe, and upon 
its stripes these words: Liberty, Union, and Fraternity. 



118 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

And it is because I desire to see this nation continue great, 
prosperous and free, the hope of mankind and the asylum of the 
oppressed, that I protest against the passage of this bill. I believe 
that a magnanimous and fraternal spirit is the truest wisdom. It 
will go much further toward cementing our Union and healing the 
wounds caused by our unfortunate civil war, than all the penal and 
oppressive laws, with bayonets to back them, that have disgraced 
the statute-books of Christendom. Treat the people of the southern 
States as our brothers — brothers in fact, in feeling, and in name. 
Let us be just to them, and we will be just to ourselves, to our 
<jrod, our country, and the Republic. Remember that justice is 
divine. 

"The quality of mercy is not strained; 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven 

Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed; 

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes; 

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes 

The throned monarch better than his crown; 

His scepter shows the force of temporal power, 

The attribute to awe and majesty, 

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; 

But mercy is above this sceptered sway;" 

* * :1c * * * * 

"It is an attribute to God Himself, 

And earthly power doth then show likest God's, 

When mercy seasons justice." 



AN APPEAL FOR KINDNESS. 



(Extracts from an address by Hon. James M. Leach, of North 
Carolina, in the House of Representatives, April 5, 1871.) 

***** * * *** 

Mr. Speaker, I appeal to this House of the nation's accredited 
Representatives to put down this attempt to wrong and oppress a 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 119 

patriotic people and thus fan into a new glow the dying embers of 
strife; I appeal to gentlemen here representing the great, pros- 
perous, happy States of the North. I come from one of the "way- 
ward," but now weeping and sorrowful "sisters." There she sits, 
among her cypress groves, clad in the habiliments of mourning, 
pinched with poverty, deserted and traduced by some of her own 
ungrateful sons, bending low, like a stricken mother, over the 
graves of her dead children! If there be a man here who for party 
advantages is willing to strike her yet again, and wring her bleeding 
heart yet more with anguish, oh! let me turn away from his deaf 
ear and stony bosom to those who do have feelings of justice and 
generosity; to those— and there are many, I trust— who are patriotic 
and honest, but who suffer themselves to be imposed upon by 
interested and characterless slanderers. 

It is in the power of such to prevent this great wrong and to 
perform a work of universal good and benefit to the entire Union. 
Sir, one touch of real kindness to the South would make us all 
brothers again. And I firmly believe that, were that generous heart 
yet beating whose kindly pulsations were forever stilled by the 
assassin six years ago, the spirit of peace and reconciliation would 
long since have overpowered the spirit of mutual distrust which 
keeps the States asunder in feeling, and that the angel of peace, and 
not discord, would triumph here to-day. I beg you, gentlemen of 
the North, to abandon these stern unconstitutional measures of 
repression and injustice, which can only serve to rekindle sectional 
hatred and hostility. 

What is needed, and all that is needed, to restore perfect and 
universal affection for the Federal Government in the South, is a 
final cessation from this whole policy of jealous and penal legisla- 
tion, which looks so much like it was meant to benefit party and 
not country, and the adoption of a truly fraternal and kindly policy 
which will prove to that section that you have ceased to regard it as 
a province to be held in subjection by the iron hand of tyranny, 
and that you once more love it as a noble and beautiful part of our 
grand heritage. You have tried severity, and you say it has failed. 
Now try kindness and generosity; try amnesty; for rest assured 



120 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

that if you have the patriotism and moral grandeur to speak that 
magic word to the oppressed States of the South — and it would be 
worth more than ten thousand votes to your party in North 
Carolina alone — the waves of passion and discord will subside and 
there will come a great calm like that which spread over the sea 
when One greater than man said, "Peace, be still!" 
***** * * *** 

Alas, that this body cannot see these things as they really are, 
not as party men, but in the interests of truth and justice, and then, 
in the exercise of an enlarged statesmanship, comprehending the 
whole country, legislate accordingly! Then would harmony and 
peace prevail throughout all this great Union. Then would the 
legislation of Congress be directed to the material interests of the 
country, the modification of a burdensome tariff, the investigation 
of abuses, with the proper remedies applied, the reduction of the 
annual expenditures of the government, and the general welfare and 
prosperity of the whole country. Then would this nation, with its 
Constitution unimpaired, start anew on its grand march to a yet 
greater prosperity and higher civilization, with its destiny unfulfilled 
and its glories undimmed — 

"When gems and monuments and crowns 

Are moldered into dust." 



A TYPICAL SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRE- 
SENTATIVES DURING THE EXCITING 
POST-BELLUM DAYS. 



(In the speech delivered by Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, in the 
House of Representatives, April 4th, 1871, extracts from which 
speech are given on previous pages of this book, Mr. Butler in his 
closing sentence quoted the couplet — 

"John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave, 
But his soul goes marching on." 




BENJAMIN F. BUTLER. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 121 

On the following day Hon. John Ritchie, of Maryland, who 
represented in Congress the district in which lay the scene of John 
Brown's raid, took the floor and proceeded to call Mr. Butler to 
account for holding up John Brown as the patron saint of Repub- 
licanism. 

Upon the conclusion of Mr. Ritchie's remarks, a controversy 
took place between Mr. Butler, Mr. Niblack, of Indiana, Mr. Swann, 
of Maryland, and Mr. Ritchie, of Maryland, which give a good 
example of the heated repartee of the Forty-Second and other 
Congresses that closely followed the war.) 

Mr. Speaker, I desire not to reply to any personal remarks 
which have been made, because almost the only thing that elects 
some of the gentlemen on the other side is abuse of me. 
(Laughter.) Some of them have been kind enough to tell me that 
the best card they had in their district was to show the people 
how they had "berated Ben Butler." (Laughter.) Therefore I am 
always willing to afford gentlemen just as much as they please of 
that kind of appeal to the intelligence of their constituents. 

Mr. Niblack: Orthodox Christians always abuse the devil on 
all suitable occasions. (Laughter.) 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I have difficulty in hearing with 
readiness what my friend opposite says. I think I do hear, how- 
ever, and I am glad to hear that he is orthodox. All I can say is 
to repeat once more that I am glad to allow all that kind of aid 
to the gentlemen on the other side. 

The other gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Swann), the Know- 
Nothing mayor of Baltimore a few years ago, whose election cost 
a thousand men murdered and struck down in that city during his 
term, I doubt not — 

Mr. Swann: I pronounce that a most infamous slander, coming 
from an irresponsible man — irresponsible politically and socially. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Let us have no generality of 
denial. Does the gentleman deny the Know-Nothingism. to begin 
with? (Laughter.) 



122 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Mr. Swann: I do deny that I ever belonged to any association 
that was not patriotic, that did not look to the support of the Union 
of the States. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I cannot yield for that. 

Mr. Swann: But I do deny that I ever belonged to an associa- 
tion formed for the purpose of degrading innocent women and 
children and levying upon the property of those who were thrown 
in contact with me and who were defenseless. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Now, then, does the gentleman 
deny that he was a Know-Nothing? (Laughter.) 

Mr. Swann: Deny what? 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Why, deny that you were a 
Know-Nothing? 

Mr, Swann: No, sir; I do not deny that. I did belong to that 
organization. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I do not yield any further. I 
have proved him a Know-Nothing. Now I will prove from the 
Baltimore Gazette, a paper published in his own district, that at 
the late election thousands of men were maltreated because he was 
made mayor. It is a Democratic organ. I would read it if I had it 
here; but I have sent for it to the committee-room. I will pub- 
lish it. 
***** * * *** 

Mr. Swann: In reply to that, if the gentleman will permit me — 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I cannot yield. 

Mr. Swann: Then, sir, he cannot yield because he is afraid of 
the truth. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I decline to yield. The gentle- 
man took an hour gratuitously when I was out of the House to 
abuse me the other day. 

Mr. Speaker, what I arose for was to say this: I think it im- 
portant for gentlemen on the other side to call up John Brcwn 
as an instance of the invasion of a State government, because when 
he'marched into Virginia with an army of seventeen thousand men, 
the State of Virginia could not conquer him until it had called for 
help the United States marines. (Laughter.) 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 123 

A Member: He only had seventeen men. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: They appeared to be seventeen 
thousand to the Virginians. (Renewed laughter.) 

Mr. Ritchie: He went there, leaving his associates behind him. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I say again, all Virginia could 
not conquer old John Brown, with seventeen men, until they called 
for the assistance of the United States marines. 

A Member: And the militia of Maryland. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Yes, sir; and the militia of Mary- 
land besides. (Laughter.) 

Mr. Terry: It was a Virginian who led them when John Brown 
was captured. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: What is the matter with the 
gentlemen on the other side? They hop up as if sitting on hot pins. 
"Let the galled jade wince, my withers are unwrung." 

Mr. Swann: But they ought to be. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: John Brown, Mr. Speaker, 
marched in the interest of freedom, into Virginia to do acts against 
the law and the Constitution. He did that which, under the law 
and Constitution, could not be justified at that time. When he was 
there what was done? Exactly what we wish to pass a law to have 
done now. They called for United States troops to stop interfer- 
ence w^ith State law, to protect the people's rights, and to secure to 
the people of every State peace and quiet. Nobody was more ready 
to call for the United States troops, when their people were inter- 
fered with, than the States of Virginia and Maryland. 

Mr. Ritchie: They were called for by the legitimate authorities 
of the States, if at all. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Let me now call the attention of 
the House to another thing. Taking the spirit exhibited on this 
floor, uncurbed by the time, place, and circumstance, or by the 
properties of place or circumstance, how must the same spirit ex- 
hibit itself toward a poor negro attacked by the same men, where 
he has no one to defend him, and where he cannot defend himself? 
The Ku Klux spirit is abroad. The Ku Klux spirit is down South; 
and when men here cannot go on with proper and ordinary debate 



124 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

without personal attack and personal violence, what shall be the 
fate of the poor suffering black man down South, all alone and 
undefended? It is for that purpose we wish to send down United 
States troops; and until gentlemen make a different exhibition here, 
we shall need no other evidence of what will take place there and 
what is already taking place there. If these gentlemen are the best 
specimens of the quiet and order down South they can send here, 
what must be the case of the worst ones down there? (Laughter.) 

What else do we see follow all this? We see them seeking to 
palliate the acts of men who think they are doing God service in 
doing murder, outrage, and wrong, which they see defended here 
by their Representatives on this floor; defended, because denied 
when all the world knows the fact; defended, because palliated; 
defended and assisted, if in no other way, because those bad men 
are encouraged by their Representatives on this floor, by their 
denial of any power in the United States to put such outrage down; 
by the declaration that no power exists in the United States to 
protect the citizen. 

And, in addition, we are called on to do what? We are ex- 
pected to take our constitutional law from their Representatives 
here, are we? We are to take it from gentlemen who, when they 
vacated their seats in this House ten years ago, declared they would 
never have anything more to do with our Constitution or this gov- 
ernment. Why do they not keep their words and stay away? Why 
come back? When you went out you promised never to come 
back, and we took you at your word. We supposed you meant 
what you said, and we certainly never asked you to come back; 
certainly not to teach us constitutional law. 

We took you at your word, and filled up your vacant seats. 
Why did you leave them? Why do you come back here to under- 
take to tell us what is the Constitution of our country — ;not yours, 
for you abjured it; that Constitution which you defied; that Consti- 
tution which you spat upon; that Constitution which you once 
swore you would defend, and then swore you would no longer be 
bound by its provisions and took an oath of allegiance to another? 
What do you know about such a Constitution as ours that you 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 125 

should come here and attempt to teach it to us who stood by it 
in evil and in good report; who stood by it when it cost some- 
thing to stand by it; who stood by it against your guns and 
your bullets, and, when we conquered, allowed you your lives 
and your liberties, which you had forfeited, and protected you 
in them precisely as we mean now to stand by our friends in the 
South, the negro, who always knew more than his master did, for 
he knew enough to be loyal. We propose to stand by our friends 
in the South and protect their lives, liberty, and property in the 
same way as we have protected and given you yours. (Applause.) 

(Here the hammer fell.) 

Mr. Swann: I trust, sir, that I shall always be mindful of the 
courtesies due to this House. The member from Massachusetts 
(Mr. Butler) has thought proper to make here, in the presence of 
this House, a personal attack upon me. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I answered one. 

Mr. Swann: I cannot yield to the member until I have made 
my explanation. I say he has thought proper to make a personal 
attack on me, and he quotes as his authority certain communica- 
tions that were furnished to him, as I know, for the express pur- 
pose, within a day or two past. 

Now, sir, I say that the information upon which the member 
has been acting here, in the assault which he has made upon me 
and my State, emanated from the organ of his own party — an organ, 
sir, that is represented by a man who was disloyal in the beginning 
of the war, who was repudiated by the navy, on many occasions, 
for divulging the secrets of the government, and who, in the com- 
mencement of the war, was confined in Fort McHenry for divulging 
secrets which should have been sacred. That man, sir, was Fulton, 
now the editor of the American newspaper, the organ of the Repub- 
lican party in the city of Baltimore. He was confined, as I have 
said, in Fort McHenry, and from that confiement he was released 
by Hon. Montgomery Blair, of this city, whom he afterward turned 
upon and stabbed, as he did upon all the other friends who had 
aided in getting his release. 



126 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

That man, sir, is followed by a miserable cur, named McGarrigle, 
who is associated with him in the management of his journal, who, 
when I occupied a position in the executive department of the 
State of Maryland, was driven from that department for mutilating 
the records of the government, after having been kindly permitted 
by me to come into the office to obtain information in regard to the 
current events in the history of that State. That is the source, sir, 
from whence the member from Massachusetts has received his infor- 
mation. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: Not at all. I got it from the 
Baltimore Gazette. 

Mr. Swann: And now I will say to this House, in reply to what 
he has stated here, that I have only to point, in answer, to my 
record in the past. I have been associated, sir, with the State of 
Maryland for more than a quarter of a century, and, in connection 
with her great works of internal improvement, I have disbursed 
more than thirteen millions of money, not one dollar of which, sir, 
was retained in my hands. Can the gentleman from Massachusetts 
say the same of the moneys which he has handled in connection 
with the public treasury? Does he come here with the same 
record? 

Mr. Cox: Or with the same reputation or the same character. 

Mr. Swann: Or with the same character or with the same repu- 
tation, without arrogating to myself, that I bear to-day among the 
constituency that I am here to represent in part? 

Why, sir, I have only to say that I have been called to nearly 
all the offices in my State, from the humblest to the most elevated; 
from that of Mayor of a city to a Senator in the Senate of the United 
States, to which I was elected by an almost unanimous vote of my 
Legislature, but which I declined in order that I might stand by 
the State of Maryland in the position of loyalty, which she has 
always occupied. I want no better defense than this. 

Now, I have very little acquaintance with the gentleman from 
Massachusetts — I beg pardon, with the member from Massachu- 
setts (Mr. Butler). He came to that State for the purpose of taking 
possession not only of the State of Maryland, but of the whole 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 127 

people of the State. He came there as a great military hero.. He 
came in upon us early one morning, when there was no opposition 
to his triumphant march. He came there with the aspirations of 
a Marlborough or a Napoleon and planted his victorious standard 
upon Federal Hill. And it was said that he capie with his spurs 
buckled around his waist and his sword dangling from his boots. 
(Laughter.) He was so elated by the success of that great victory 
that he made his headquarters at the Gilmor House, where he tried 
to degrade innocent women and children during his whole connec- 
tion with that affair. 

And I say it here, and I call upon that member to deny it if he 
can, that after having been three days in the Gilmor House, in a 
course of revelry that would have degraded any man occupying 
that high position, after having been in a state of beastly intoxication 
for three days (the Speaker rapped to order), he was helped upon 
his horse by his commiserating friends, in order that he might make 
a triumphal display through the streets of that city. And yet he 
has now the boldness and the audacity to stand upon this floor and 
make an attack upon me and upon the State of Maryland. Sir, I 
wish that member to understand that if there are blows to give 
there are blows to take. I wish him to understand distinctly, in 
reply to the attack which he has made upon me in reference to the 
American party, that I did belong to that party, in common with a 
distinguished gentleman, a leader on the other side of the House, 
Hon. Henry Winter Davis, under whose lead I was following. If 
I committed an error then, when I was young in politics, I was 
following in the lead of a high priest of the Republican party. I 
did no more than that; I did nothing to detract from the position 
in which I stood toward the people of my State; I subscribed to 
no principles that were not the principles of the Constitution and 
the laws; I belonged to no association, as I stated before, which 
advocated the stealing of spoons and the degradation of innocent 
women and children. My record in the State of Maryland shows 
that I was above it. And when that member the other day charged 
this side of the House with complicity with murder, and when he 
charged the Speaker of this House for whom I entertain the most 



128 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

profound respect, with having elevated himself by his connection 
with land-grabs, I looked upon him with a contempt which I do 
not hesitate to express here now in the presence of the House. 
(Rapped to order by the Speaker.) 

(Here the hammer fell.) 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: To the gross personal calumnies 
of the Representative from Maryland (Mr. Swann), I have but a 
single word of answer to make, and that word is that the history of 
the country will show the utter falsity of the only substantive charge 
made by him as of every other that has ever been made against me. 
If I understood the gross accusation, it was ''that in the city of Bal- 
timore, when I went there in May, 1861, I lay three days at the 
Gilmor House in a state of beastly intoxication, and was then taken 
out and put on my horse by commiserating friends." 

Mr. Swann: I am glad to hear the gentleman admit what I 
stated. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: That, then, is what they call 
South honorable action and gentlemanly course of debate, to claim 
that I admit the charge. (Mr. Swann was walking up the aisle 
toward the cloak room, when someone called him back.) Let him 
go; he had better go at once. I was only repeating the gross and 
slanderous accusation, so that there should be no mistake. Now 
for the answer. 

After sunset, on the eve of the 14th of May, in a thunder-storm 
which frightened the gentleman from Maryland into his house, or 
I should have found myself opposed to him, I entered, at the head 
of a thousand United States troops, a rebel city of two hundred and 
sixty thousand inhabitants, more or less. On the day but one 
before May 15th, I received a telegram appointing me major-general 
of volunteers, and on the following night I left the city, never to 
go back to it again for months and months. 

Mr. Swann: I hope never to see you there again. (Laughter.) 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I had not the pleasure of seeing 
the gentleman there when I was there. All that kind of cattle then 
kept out of my way. (Laughter.) 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 129 

But now for the charge. I was not in that city during the time 
he charges. It took me less than twenty-four hours to quell those 
rebels, and then I was sent somewhere else in the line of duty, 
having been promoted major-general, and was in Washington on the 
i6th day of May. I was not in the Gilmor House, save an hour for 
dinner, at all. My headquarters were on Federal Hill. 

What becomes, then, of the charge of three days' debauchery, 
which is a part of the Plug-Ugly, Know-Nothing, "Dead-Rabbit" 
slander of Baltimore city, fitly retailed by a fit leader of a filthy, 
disgraceful (the Speaker raises his hammer as if to call to order) 
mob? I do not mean, of course, the gentleman from Maryland 
(Mr. Ritchie). (Laughter.) 

***** * * ^H** 

Now, for another thing. The gentleman from Maryland who 
has a right to that name by the courtesies of the House — for I will 
not propose to steal the poor wit of anybody, as he has done, used 
on another occasion by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Cox) 
in using the term "member" — the gentleman from Maryland, under- 
takes to boast to us how much money he has disbursed — $13,000,000 
— and he tells us that none of it stuck to his hands. But what do 
other people say? (Laughter.) I never have found it necessary 
to deny the false and foul slanders that have been brought to bear 
upon me. If my government, or any officer of my government, 
or any man with whom I have ever had occasion to settle my 
accounts as a public officer, has ever made any charge against me, 
I am yet to hear it. 

No fault has ever been found in that regard by those who had 
a right to find fault if there was ground for it. All the fault-finding 
has come from men who did — what? Who undertook to steal all 
the United States property within their States and started off to 
secede from the government, and by those only, who, knowing what 
they would have done themselves if they had been in my place, 
judging me by the best standard of judgment that they had — their 
own base hearts, passions and wishes — knew that if they had had 
the opportunity I had, handling millions, they would have stolen 
them, and spoons besides (laughter), and therefore they thought 



130 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

I must have done as they would have done. They are not to he 
blamed for that suspicion; they judged me as best they could, by 
the highest standard they had. Satan can only understand how- 
devils would act. There is the end of that. 

I am further accused, in the city of Baltimore, of dealing im- 
properly with women and children there by the gentleman. The 
only thing I am sorry for is that I did not stay there long enough 
to have the opportunity to have dealt with them all. There was a 
city, however, in which I issued an order copied substantially from 
an ordinance of the city of London. I brought the rebellious 
women of that city which I governed to terms by simply issuing an 
order, which executed itself, that made every respectable woman act 
as if she were a respectable woman; an order which executed itself, 
because every decent woman did not insult my soldiers because 
she wanted not to be taken for a common woman, and every 
common woman acted in the same way because she wanted to be 
thought a decent woman. (Laughter.) And therefore there was 
nobody to insult my troops. 

Mr. Swann: And, sir — 

Mr. Buller, of Massachusetts: I cannot yield. Has the gentle- 
man got back? The last I saw of the gentleman was a dissolving 
view of him going out on the other side of the House. (Laughter.) 
That order was not issued in secret; it was made in the face of the 
world. And it was never requisite to arrest anybody under it. If 
there is anything in my life that I have reason to be proud of, it is 
for the issuing of that order; looking back upon it, it seems to me 
almost inspiration, by which I was enabled to give an order which 
prevented bloodshed and riot, and prevented the arrest of women 
and children in the streets for insulting the soldiers of my garrison. 

Now, then, sir, a single further word on the very unpleasant 
topics which are forced upon me. But I am reminded again that I 
gave that order in the language of an English city ordinance, and 
there it can be found in good old Saxon English to this day. 

One thing further. You will observe, Mr. Speaker, I have never 
obtruded my self and my own personal acts upon this House, and 
have never undertaken to defend any one of them, for they defend 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 131 

themselves. But let me say to the gentleman that I have not lived 
for twenty-five years, as he has, as a politician, holding every office 
he could get his hands on, "from village alderman up;" but I lived 
in a community, man and boy, where virtue, intelligence, and 
propriety of life are as much prized as anywhere on earth, and 1 
never held any office of profit or salary until I held the office of 
brigadier general, by which I was enabled to bring the rebel asso- 
ciates of the gentleman from Baltimore on their knees to mc. 
(Laughter on the Democratic side.) 

Mr. Swann: Never, sir; never. 

Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts: I never held any other except 
that of Representative of the people. I represent a district which 
knows me. I represent a community who know me my life long, 
and their continued confidence, may I say their ever-increasing 
confidence? — for which 1 humbly thank my God, for it is the only 
protection I need against slander and detraction — their ever-increas- 
ing confidence in me is the best answer to all calumnies. Why, sir, 
Washington was denounced by the enemies of the country as a 
speculator for founding this capital. Jackson was placarded in the 
streets of London as a tyrant and a beast because he stood for the 
liberties of the country. I am the only American beside him that 
has been so honored. I have been in the same way attacked by 
the same kind of men. (Laughter on the Democratic side.) Yes, 
sir, by precisely the same kind of men — English aristocrats who 
desired the destruction of the country, and sneaking southern rebels 
who were in league with them (renewed laughter on the Demo- 
cratic side); men who, after having been Know-Nothings, after 
having advised the burning of churches, Catholic-Irish churches, 
now pander to the Catholic-Irish votes, to get here to represent the 
city of Baltimore. (Laughter and applause.) 

(Here the hammer fell.) 



132 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY VINDICATED. 



HON. FREDERICK T. FRELINGHUYSEN. OF NEW JER- 
SEY. 



(Extracts from speech delivered in the United States Senate 
April 6th, 1871.) 

In common with those who feel a concern for the welfare of the 
nation. I am interested in the subject-matter before the Senate. 
But, before proceeding to submit the remarks that I shall make, I 
desire, respectfully but firmly, to repel the general charge, so 
freely and so frequently made, that the agitation of this subject is 
in aid of the Republican party. On the contrary, if we were en- 
gaged in political trickery and jugglery, it is very patent that the 
game would be to let violence and outrage have full reign, to have 
a carnival of blood and rapine and murder, until the whole nation 
was aroused, for then we know that the people would look to that 
party to which in a like emergency they looked, and not in vain, 
to suppress disorder and restore peace. They certainly would re- 
sort to the party in power for protection. 

So far from this being an effort to aid the dominant party, it is 
very clear that that party makes a sacrifice of temporary and ap- 
parent interests in obedience to the demand of duty and of patriot- 
ism, for by it they admit that reconstruction and the governments 
which have been established are imperfect in structure or in 
strength. It is true that we do not admit that we are responsible 
for this imperfection, but the admission of the imperfection in- 
volves the necessity for explanation, which it would be policy to 
avoid did not stern duty demand that we should meet the case as 
it is. 

The Republican party is not endowed with omnipotence. It 
cannot make events or control circumstances. As it proposes in 



IN THE AMERICAN CONORESS. 133 

the future, so it has in the past vigorously contended with the evik 
that beset the country. 

At the close of the war this government found upon its hands 
some eight or ten millions who came panting from an effort to 
destroy the nation. They were vanquished in arms, but unrepent- 
ant in crime, unconverted from the fatal heresy that they owed an 
allegiance to the State superior to that which they owed the gen- 
eral government; a heresy, let me say in passing, that seems not 
yet entirely crushed. What was this government to do with these 
millions? It might have obliterated all State lines, and have estab- 
lished over them a military territorial government: but that would 
have been contrary to the spirit of our institutions, and would have 
been doing violence to the kindly feelings which a brave and gener- 
ous people entertain for those they have vanquished; that would 
have been to admit that the magic band which holds the States in 
the union, and which we claim to be indissoluble, had in fact been 
broken. 

Besides, there were other complications. Scattered through 
these conquered States were four million fellow-beings who had 
been -our friends, who had been loyal to the government, and who 
had rendered efficient service in the conflict. To have left them 
unprotected would have been as unjust as ungracious. 

The Republican party, surrounded by these difficulties, deter- 
mined to adhere to and carry out the great cardinal principle of 
this government, that which distinguishes it from all the other 
governments of the world, the perfect equality of all men before 
the law, and to give citizenship and the ballot without distinction 
of race or color. 

This measure violated no rights of those who had been in rebel- 
lion, because they had forfeited their rights, and besides, the people' 
of the North adopted for themselves the same rule that they im- 
posed upon the South. There was a necessity, too, for this course, 
as in no other way could the government have secured a loyal con- 
stituency, or have given protection to their allies. To have with- 
held the action would have been to manifest to the world that we 
had no faith in the great principle of equality, which has been, and 



134 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

still is, our boast. The best reason, however, for our action is, we 
did right. The difficulties that have resulted from this radical 
change are fewer than I anticipated, and every year they are becom- 
ing less. To have left the colored race unprotected would have 
been to leave them a mass of moral degradation, a pest to society, 
and a reproach to the world. 

We are told that there are colored members of the Legislatures 
in those States who have no property to be taxed. Whose fault is 
that? For generations that race, with a patience that has no paral- 
lel, men, women and children, labored as never did any other peo- 
ple. They reclaimed the morasses and subdued the soil of the 
South. Besides supporting themselves and feeding and clothing 
and educating their masters, and enabling them to live in affluence, 
they have every year by their labor produced the millions of cotton 
by which the exchanges of the country have been carried on. 

They have no property to be taxed! Sir, if this nation had 
done, as in law and in justice it might have done — I do not say as 
it should have done — confiscated the property of its enemies and 
divided it among its allies, the disability of a want of property to be 
taxed would have been with those who were our foes and not with 
those who were our friends. " 

We are told, too, that there are colored men in these Legis- 
latures who cannot read or write. Who is to be censured for that 
condition of things? Certainly those who made it a crime to teach 
one with a tawny skin to read the words of eternal life, a privilege 
which, whether it be improved or not, no one here would for any 
inducement forego. This, too, is a disability that under the hu- 
mane system the Republican party has inaugurated is rapidly being 
removed. 

Again, we are told that these Legislatures are entailing a heavy 
and dishonest debt upon the States; and to the surprise of an en- 
lightened age this fact is urged as a justification, or at least in 
palliation, of the reign of terror which we would arrest. I do not 
know how the fact is as to these expenditures, but I do know that 
the way to gain relief for a violation of law is not to inaugurate 
lawlessness. I do know that the Ku Klux Klan, by its acts of 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 133 

rapine and murder, has reduced and will continue to reduce the 
value of property at the South to a vastly greater extent than even 
the alleged unjust assessments for taxation. 

The remedy for the evil, if it exists, is in the future, by the open 
and peaceable exposure of the abuse, by appealing to the self- 
interest and sense of justice of the community, and then through 
the ballot to obtain relief. And as to any burdens already unjustly 
created by those Legislatures, it may be that resort will yet be had 
to that provision of the Constitution which I shall invoke against 
this violence; for one part of that amendment is, that "no State 
shall make or enforce any law that shall abridge the privileges or 
immunities of a citizen of the United States," and the right that 
private property shall not be taken without compensation is among 
those privileges. 

This much, Mr. President, I have said in vindication of the 
Republican party against the charge that they are agitating this 
subject of violence at the South for party purposes, and in answer 
to the apology urged for those engaged in violence, that they are 
making war on governments which the Republican party unwisely 
and unjustly inaugurated. 

Mr. President, we had better attend to these disorders now. A 
crevice in a dike or a levee, which a child's hand could cover, if 
neglected, may lead to a general inundation. We once before 
thought that the genius of our country could sport with licentious- 
ness and her purity not be tarnished. We once before thought that 
this nation possessed a charter of immortal security, while all the 
time we were floating down the rapids of lawless passion until we 
trembled equipoised on the fearful cataract. Let this Congress ad- 
journ now, without applying the easy remedy which the executive 
has asked, and one more severe and dangerous will be required. 
Let the fourteenth amendment be enforced equally and constitu- 
tionally among all the States, and we have done our work as 
statesmen, not as partisans; as Americans, and not as sectional men. 

Mr. President, from the details of the atrocities to which we 
have listened, we can turn to a brighter picture. We now have a 



136 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

full Senate. I congratulate the nation and the party whose liberal 
policy has so soon effected this result. We see before us Senators 
from all parts of this vast, continuous domain, which is destined to 
be the seat of the grandest and freest empire of the world. Our 
people have one language, one religion, similar manners, and all 
delight in a free government. Let us unite in our efforts that the 
law may reign supreme. 



LET US BE MAGNANIMOUS. 



HON. JOHN EDWARDS, OF ARKANSAS. 



(Extract from speech made in the House of Representatives 
April 6th, 1871.) 

The great and victorious Republican party can afford to be mag- 
nanimous. The smoke of battle has long since passed away; and 
in order to develop the great natural resources of the country, and 
build up enterprise and commercial relations with the world, we 
have only to show a liberal spirit. That course of conduct will 
commend itself to the just and thinking men of all parties. The 
great Republican party will live and flourish upon the affections of 
the people, let the storm howl as it may. A cramped policy, a 
policy founded in force, oppression, and injustice, is not statesman- 
ship, and cannot stand the test of time. We profess to have a re- 
publican form of government — all power derived from the people; 
we must trust the people, or else republicanism is a farce. It is 
impossible to continue this state of things much longer. 

"Truth is omnipotent and public justice certain." 

"Taxation and representation must go together," was the key- 
note of 1776, and must be the key-note now. 

Mr. Speaker, I have been a life-long friend of the colored race. 
I have plead their cause, the cause of humanity, when the black 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 137 

man was crushed under the iron heel of despotism. Now he is free 
in all things before the law. Now I appeal to the colored people 
throughout the country to be the first to come to the rescue, and 
aid in removing the shackles from the white man's limbs. Having 
but recently emerged from under the galling yoke of slavery, the 
black race cannot in turn become a party to enslave the white race, 
a race endowed by cultivation, intelligence and refinement. Then 
the God of Heaven will smile upon the black man's efforts, and not 
until then. No party schemes of success and of temporary power 
should for one moment weigh in the scales against right, truth, and 
justice. The golden rule, we must do unto our neighbors as we 
would have our neighbor do unto us under similar circumstances, 
stands with as much force to-day as when uttered from the lips of 
the Prince of Peace. The country demands repose. To obtain that 
repose we must come up to the standard of a just and Christian 
spirit, or else the days of this republic will soon be numbered. 



NO ANNEXATION TOLERABLE EXCEPT 
NORTHWARD. 



HON. JUSTIN S. MORRILL, OF VERMONT. 



^xtr-'ct from a speech delivered in the United States Senate on 
tl. mc ation of San Domingo, April 7th, 1871.) 

But let us for a moment turn our eyes from a land congenial to 
monkeys and parrots t6 something of more substantial value. Let 
us forego the seductions of sugar and coffee plantations, rising so 
luxuriantly in some tropical imaginations, though scarcely to be 
found now even in the narrow cul-de-sac they once filled, and face 
the north. 

"The blood more stirs 
To rouse a lion than to start a hare." 



13S ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

At the north there is a country interlocked and dovetailed to 
our northern boundary, throughout its whole magnificent extent, 
with a people of kindred stock and tongue, which, without money 
and without price, and with their own consent, will at some time 
surely show, perhaps in the second term of General Grant, that 
they are ready to join and improve their fortunes by going hand in 
hand and abreast with the great republic. Let them do this, and 
their advancement will be assured, while our own will not be re- 
tarded, but perhaps made more complete. This would reflect honor 
upon all parties, banish Fenianism, and blot out the name of the 
Alabama. 

The British provinces are of age, and Great Britain daily hints 
to the bashful youngsters that, although she will not forbid them 
all shelter under the paternal roof and will not wholly cease the 
great baby perquisites of soft caresses, yet she feels chagrined that 
they have not discovered it to be quite time for them to shift for 
themselves and to cease teasing her for bonbons and pocket money. 
She does not tell them in plain words, as Isaac told Jacob, where 
and when to go and wed, for she is altogether too clever not to 
know what alliance has been foreordained and determined. What 
the laws of the universe join together cannot be kept asunder. It 
will not be a runaway match, for there is no shame and need be no 
secrecy about it; but some fine morning the last of the "Queen's 
Own" having departed, the New Dominion will muster its man- 
hood and pop the question. After that, Toronto, Montreal, Hali- 
fax and Quebec, we shall hear from more than four million throats, 
"Hail Columbia!" Here is the true field of honor. But, if we 
show an indiscriminate and promiscuous desire to annex anything 
and everything, even a slice of a tropical island, a match of the 
cheapest and most dubious character, how can we expect our 
proud and fastidious Anglo-Saxon neighbors on the north, ripe in 
experience and liberal culture, with their solid and extensive patri- 
mony, to join such a union with any alacrity or affection? 

I am sincerely apprehensive that the project for Dominican an- 
nexation will seriously jeopardize our prospects in the North, and 
perhaps postpone the interests and happiness of millions of people 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 139 

indefinitely. The northern field of enterprise, which might attract 
our people and capital, would be one of assured health and profit, 
and contribute to the power, certainly not to be the weakness, of 
the nation. The New Dominion, once infolded by our flag, would 
find the blood coursing in its veins with a swifter current and fuller 
pulsation, and with all her industries, her commerce, and national 
improvements, upheld by forty million hearty coadjutors, would 
also find such security and prosperity as have not been reached 
even in the dreams of its most sanguine citizens. Its population 
and wealth would be doubled in a single decade. Why should we, 
then, barricade the entrance to our union against the provinces on 
the north by any rubbish tumbled in from the West India Islands? 
We urge nothing — are in no hurry — but let us not snatch at half an 
island and lose a continent. 



THE WARNINGS OF HISTORY 



HON. JUSTIN S. MORRILL, OF VERMONT. 



(Extract from a speech in the United States Senate on the an- 
nexation of San Domingo, April 7th, 1871.) 

* :ic * * * * * 

The lessons of history, I am aware, are little heeded, and a fast 
people in a headlong pursuit of material interests often refuse to 
recognize that they are on the same road marked by the bleached 
skeletons of nations wasted or fatally stricken down by the results 
of a similar mad ambition. Conceding that the despotism which 
controls an empire may be the best adapted among all govern- 
mental institutions for the control of colonies, distant provinces 
and foreign territories, let us see how it has fared with a few of 
such examples in the past, and where success might be looked for, 
if anywhere. 



140 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Alexander pursued territorial acquisitions until tradition records 
that he wept because he could no longer find a new world to con- 
quer, having acquired in seven years an empire as large as that: 
acquired by the Romans in seven hundred; but the great Alexander' 
was no sooner dead than his colossal empire was found to be as ; 
incurably debauched as he was known tg have been himself, and 
the empire was at once broken into numerous military fragments to 
vex the world with new wars and a fresh brood of tyrants. At last 
Macedonia itself, the ancient seat of Philip and the base of the son's 
power, was reduced to a mere Roman province, while the city of 
Alexandria, built to perpetuate the name and splendor of its foun- 
der, has long been a conquest under the dominion of the Turks, 
who give away its ruins, with barbaric munificence, to British 
museums. 

The decline Snd fall of Rome was made certain when it com- 
menced its work of centuries of triumphant and ferocious territorial 
aggrandizement. In his last will the advice of Augustus against 
this policy came too late. The blunder he would restrain had 
already been committed. The people of vast untutored provinces 
were made Roman citizens, but these foreign-made citizens only 
served to undermine the power and glory of the original seat of 
Roman greatness, which diminished in its stamina and virtue — the 
main pillars of any State — as rapidly as it increased in its bulk of 
gross material possessions. Gibbon asserts and abundantly proves 
that the Roman people were dissolved into the common mass and 
confounded with millions of inferior provincials. The institutions 
of Rome were destroyed by the poison everywhere lurking in anu. 
around ill-advised territorial expansions. Even the exalted type u. 
ancient Roman virtue and manhood was unequal to the strain, and 
the country of the Scipios and Caesars was finally vanquished, and 
vanquished by even the Huns — even as Egypt was conquered and 
for centuries ruled by the Mamalukes. So much for ancient ex- 
amples. Let us now come down to a later period of history, with- 
out even glancing at the rapid decadence of Mohammedan con- 
quests, and watch the inflexible result. 



IX THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 141 

Spain under Charles II. became the proudest nation of the 
earth, in consequence of the extent and importance of its territorial 
acquisitions, both in the old world and the new. She could boast 
of Castile, Aragon and Navarre, of Milan. Naples, Sicily and Sar- 
dinia, of Cape Verd and the Canaries, of Tunis, of the Philippines 
and the Moluccas, of Peru, Chili and Mexico, and finally, under 
Charles V., of Cuba and Hispaniola; and it is a part of this last 
ill-omened island which our excellent President has so earnestly 
sought to clutch. But all of these more or less magnificent Spanish 
appendages contributed only a momentary splendor to Spain, and 
then for the most part they dropped from the parent stem like over- 
ripe fruit, and brought a deeper and more lasting humiliation upon 
that haughty but exhausted country than has been visited upon any 
other nation in modern times. The riches from the tributes of en- 
slaved peoples, succeeded by luxury and effeminacy, proved to be 
apples that turned to ashes in the mouth. 

Take the case of Bonaparte, who would have made, to borrow 
the language of one of our best American thinkers, "the earth for 
his pasture and the sea for his pond," and where are his possessions 
now? The ode of Byron fitly answers: 

"Is this the man of thousand thrones, 
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones? 

And can he thus survive? 
Since he, miscall'd the morning star, 
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far." 
And these words almost as well apply to Napoleon the last as to 
the first. 

There is, however, still another recent example. I mean that of 
the famous house of Hapsburg, or the Emperor of Austria, who 
recently, besides Germans, held under his command Italians, Poles, 
Croats, Dalmatians, Slovaks, Romans and Hungarians; but the 
battle of Sadowa left Francis Joseph among the poorest and sad- 
dest monarchs of Europe, and from the first rank, Austria, cut in 
twain by the astute and relentless Bismarck, fell to a second-rate 
position among the nations of the. earth, henceforth with ample 
leisure to reflect upon the hollowness and folly of incongruous 



142 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

annexations under one dominion of separate, remote and diverse 
peoples. 

Are we to shut our eyes to such significant facts, which stand 
forth, as light-houses upon dangerous coasts, in all the pages of 
history? Can any one be under the delusion that human nature has 
greatly changed or that the United States are to have a charmed 
life and be exempt from all perils however recklessly guided? It 
appears to me that these great historic facts should have their 
proper influence — and I ask no more — in the decision of the ques- 
tion before us. Shall we not first of all preserve the inheritance of 
our fathers? 

It may be said that England has not endangered its permanence, 
or its solid foundations, by its extensive colonial system. That re- 
mains yet to be solved. Her mastery has been maintained at the 
immense cost of her present national debt and her present and past 
system of taxation, and of such a navy as makes it not inappropriate 
for her poets to boast that "Britannia rules the waves;" but it must 
be borne in mind that no British colony is represented, or has any 
control, in the home government. British statesmen are not em- 
barrassed by any such foreign admixture. Australia, New Zea- 
land, India and the African and North American colonies may not 
forever submit to imperial control, nor will their separation from 
it be likely to be restrained by force. At present the British empire 
in India stands firmly — bating rather too frequent mutinies and re- 
volts — but are there not eruptive social and political symptoms at 
home which at present tax all the resources of the most consum- 
mate British statesmanship? Even Gladstone's constituents peti- 
tion him to resign because he has made them paupers. In the 
event of internal commotion, or of a great war. Great Britain has 
no colony which could take her part or that would contribute a 
penny to her exchequer or a man to her army. Charles XII. said 
he taught his enemies how to conquer him, and it may be found 
that the British will have taught the Irish, as well as the Indian 
Sepoys, an art which may hereafter plague even British conquerors. 
At any rate, it is apparent that Russia, Denmark and Spain, as well 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESvS. 143 

as England, no longer cling to colonies with their ancient tenacity. 
They can part with them without any heart-breaking. 

The framers and founders of our government seem to have been 
diligent students of history and the debates in the Constitutional 
Convention, as well as the papers composing the Federalist, show 
that they were keenly alive to all the facts bearing upon the career 
and fate of republican forms of government. Under the old con- 
federation a union of Canada and other British provinces with the 
United States was openly contemplated and provided for, but when 
the Constitution of 1789 was ordained and established such a union 
had become apparently hopeless, and the expatriated Tories having 
made the provinces their home, it was then undesirable, and per- 
haps repugnant to the ardent patriotism of the States. At all 
events, the peril which tracks the unlimited extension of territory 
in the progress of nations in all ages of the world was so obvious 
and so grave in its character that no power was anywhere given, 
under our Constitution, by which such acquisitions were to be ever 
authorized, directly or indirectly. In other words, they were all 
forever soberly and silently renounced. 

This should be a barrier high enough at least to make us pause 
before we attempt to leap over it. It is not enough that the plain 
and palpable force of the Constitution has been disregarded; ought 
it to be again and now? The advantages should be overwhelmingly 
in favor of any scheme of annexation before it should be even 
mooted, and its character such as would be cordially approved by 
the people of all sections and of all parties of our country. Noth- 
ing less can justify any annexation. It should not be a doubtful 
question carried by a beggarly and reluctant vote. Can it be 
doubted, if ever carried at all, it must be by hesitating votes and by 
the leanest of constitutional numbers, whether by treaty or the 
legerdemain of a joint resolution? Can it be doubted that the an- 
nexation of Santo Domingo, with the long, dark train which drags 
just in the rear, would have been rejected with scorn by the wise 
founders of our government? Certainly it has no element of char- 
acter and no advantage of position which can contribute to the 
safety or glory of our peerless republic. All history shows that we 



144 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

ought to beware of what could not be other than a hotbed for the 
germination of national discord, national extravagance and national 
effeminacy. 



THIS COUNTRY A NATION. 



HON. CHARLES SUMNER, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



(Extract from a speech delivered in the United States Senate, 

April 13th, 1871.) 

****** * * ** 

What makes us a Nation? Not armies, not fleets, not fortifica- 
tions, not commerce reaching every shore abroad, not industry 
filling every vein at home, not population thronging the highways; 
none of these make our Nation. The national life of this Republic 
is found in the principle of Unity and in the Equal Rights of all 
our people; all of which being national in character, are necessarily 
placed under the great safeguard of the Nation. Let the national 
unity be assailed, and the Nation will spring to its defense. Let 
the humblest citizen in the remotest village be assailed in the 
enjoyment of Equal Rights, and the Nation must do for the 
humblest citizen what it would do for itself. And this is 
only according to the original promises of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and the more recent promises of the constitutional amend- 
ments, the two concurring in the same national principles. 

Do you question the binding character of the great Declaration? 
Then do I invoke the constitutional amendments. But you cannot 
turn from either, and each establishes beyond question the bound- 
aries of national power, making it coextensive with the national 
unity and the Equal Rights of all originally declared and subse- 
quently assured. Whatever is announced in the Declaration is essen- 
tially national, and so also is all that is assured. The principles of the 
Declaration, re-enforced by the constitutional amendments, cannot 




CHARLES SUMNER. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 145 

be allowed to suffer. Being common to all, they must be under the 
safeguard of all; nor can any State set up its local system against 
the universal law. Equality implies universality; and what is uni- 
versal must be national. If each State is left to determine the 
protection of Equal Rights, then will protection vary according to 
the State, and Equal Rights will prevail only according to the 
accident of local law. There will be as many equalities as States. 
Therefore, in obedience to reason, as well as solemn mandate, is 
this power in the Nation. 

Nor am I deterred from this conclusion by any cry of centralism, 
or it may be imperialism. These are terms borrowed from France, 
where this abuse has become a tyranny, subjecting the most distant 
communities even in the details of administration to central control. 
Mark, if you please, the distinction. But no such tyranny is pro- 
posed among us; nor any interference of any kind with matters 
local in character. The Nation will not enter the State, except for 
the safeguard of rights national in character, and then only as the 
sunshine, with beneficial power, and, like th€ sunshine, for the 
equal good of all. As well assail the sun because it is central — ^be- 
cause it is imperial. Here is a just centralism; here is a generous 
imperialism. Shunning with patriotic care that injurious central- 
ism and that fatal imperialism, which have been the Nemesis of 
France, I hail that other centralism which supplies an equal protec- 
tion to every citizen, and that other imperialism which makes Equal 
Rights the supreme law, to be maintained by the national arm in all 
parts of the land. Centralism! Imperialism! Give me the cen- 
tralism of Liberty. Give me the Imperialism of Equal Rights. 
And may this national Capitol, where we are now assembled, be 
the emblem of our Nation. Planted on a hilltop, with portals open- 
ing North and South, East and West, with spacious chambers and 
with arching dome crowned by the image of Liberty; such is our 
imperial Republic; but in nothing is it so truly imperial as in that 
beneficent Sovereignty which rises like a dome crowned by the 
image of Liberty. 

Nor am I deterred by any party cry. The Republican party 
must do its work, which is nothing less than the regeneration of the 



146 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Nation according to the promises of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. To maintain the Republic in its unity, and the people in 
their rights, such is this transcendent duty. Nor do I fear any 
political party which assails these sacred promises, even if it falsely 
assume the name of Democrat. How powerless their efforts against 
these immortal principles! For myself I know no better service 
than that which I now announce. Here have I labored steadfastly 
from early life, bearing obloquy and enmity, and here again I pledge 
the energies which remain to me, even if obloquy and enmity 
survive. 



THE AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT 
CRITICISED. 



HON. WILLIAM A. HOLMAN, OF INDIANA. 



(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives April 14th, 1871.) 
****** * * ** 

But seriously, sir, I represent an agricultural district. I am a 
farmer (laughter); about the only one, perhaps, in the House. I am 
interested in the real interests of farming. My friend from Ohio 
(Mr. Wilson) is a banker, and bankers have no intimate connection 
with farming except its products, and are tillers of the earth only in 
the pleasant way of conservatories and the greenhouses that embel- 
lish the elegant lawns of our gentlemen of leisure. I appreciate the 
interests of agriculture; and since I have had the honor to be a mem- 
ber of this House I have been persistent in voting for and urging 
appropriations designed for the benefit of the farmer. During my 
term of service here every appropriation which has been designed 
to benefit the farmer or promote in any way the interests of agri- 
culture, or extend our knowledge of the productions of the earth, 
has received my earnest support. But I do not desire the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, created for the benefit of the hardy tillers of 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. ^"Z 

the soil, the men who dig wealth by actual labor out of the «arth, 
shall be perverted to a merely fanciful field for the display oi ck- 
gance and taste — a field in which gentlemen of elegant leisure may 
properly engage, but should do so at their own expense. 

My friend talks about "economic plants." I am afraid, sir, my 
friend, like myself, is not very much at home in this botanical 
world. 

I said that the camellia japonica was found in this glass structure. 
My friend admits that. But I have never heard this called an "econ- 
omic plant." My friend says that the plants raised in the glass 
'louse are used as material for dyeing. Well, sir, there may be thuere 
such plant as dye, by absorption, the rays of the sun upon the 
flower, but I do not think that there are any other products or 
materials for dyeing anything else in this elegant structure. I admit 
the camellia japonica is beautifully tinted; but I never heard that 
flowers of this class were used to color the fabrics which make 
clothing for ordinary mortals. 

Mr. Speaker, I would like my friend to mention some "economic 
plant" which is cultivated in this famous conservatory for the benefit 
of the farmers. I find there, for instance, the Ethiopian lily — a 
gay, very elegant, showy flower; but does my friend pretend that it 
is an "economic plant?" It gladdens the eye; its fragrance exhil- 
arates us; it is spiritualizing and all that; but I never heard it called 
an "economic plant." Again, we see there the elegant spearhead, 
with its beautiful little cluster of pendant red berries, so gladdening 
to the eye. But I doubt whether the toiling farmer, who from year 
to year digs food out of the earth, would deem it a good thing that 
the sweat which falls from his brow shall be coined into money for 
the purpose of cultivating these pretty elegancies to gladden the 
sense of gentlemen of leisure about this capital. 

Again, sir, the cactus is to be found there, and the heliotrope and 
the night-blooming cereus. Is the cactus or the night-bloomijig 
cereus an "economic plant?" Why, the gentleman smiles at the 
idea. I have seen the azalea there in elegant luxuriance; and; the 
sight-seeing visitors hold up their hands in admiration of the skiU 
of the Agricultural Department in the cultivation of the azalea. 



148 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

• Mr. Wilson, of Ohio: I wish the gentleman would state whether 
in these remarks he refers to the Botanic Garden of the Agricultural 
Department? 

Mr. Holman: Oh, no; my friend ought to know — almost every- 
body here at the Capitol knows — the kind of plants, exotic and 
elegant, collected in this elegant glass structure which cost the peo- 
ple last year $25,000. The "economic plants" which you find there 
— the azalea, the fuchsia, the hydrangea japonica, and so on to the 
end — in this agricultural glass structure are the same which you find 
in the Botanic Garden, kept up at an expense of many thousands of 
dollars annually, and draw about as heavily on the laboring people 
of the country as such matters of taste should be permitted to do; 
and yet we have vast repositories of exotics besides. 

• 'Such are the economic plants cultivated in the name of agricul- 
ture. They are exotic plants, elegant and beautiful, sir; but that 
they are at all connected with any economic purpose is supremely 
absurd. We appropriate year after year large sums of money to 
keep up these glass structures in the west front of the Capitol, in 
which elegant flowers, mostly exotic, are cultivated and with which 
the taste of the nation is gratified. I have never complained of this 
appropriation. That we should build another magnificent green- 
hotlse for the same purpose, and keep it up at an annual expense 
of many thousands, is bad enough, but to pretend to do it for the 
benefit of agriculture in the country is utterly absurd. 

Another thing. The gentleman tells us there are hundreds of 
yarieties of foreign grapes propogated here. If my friend goes into 
th-e conservatory of any gentleman around this capital, or any 
other city, will he not find the same variety of foreign grapes under 
cultivation under glass? Will he not find them cultivated in every 
glass structure used as a conservatory in the country, where the citi^ 
ien is wealthy enough to keep up that kind of a luxury? Certainly 
he will. Do the farmers of his country have conservatories to 
raise exotic grapes? No, sir; they plant them in the open air, 
unpirotected by glass structures, under God's blessed sunlight to be 
warmed into life. Agriculture is a thing of the open field, of labor 
and sweat and sunlight and rain, not of fancy. There is the same 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 14^ 

connection between that glass structure and agriculture as there 
would be between a professor in the Agricultural Department of 
the classic and beautiful mythology of the goddess Ceres and an 
actual farmer sweating at his plow. It is all pure fancy and taste, 
well enough in its way and very elegant, but has no connection 
whatever with the real agriculture of the field. 



THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE CAPITOL BUILD- 
ING AT WASHINGTON. 



HON. JOHN F. FARNSWORTH, OF ILLINOIS. 



(Remarks made in the House of Representatives May 14th, 1871.) 

****** * * *:)t 

I am told that this building has cost an amount nearer twenty 
million dollars than the sum I stated. And it is surrounded by — what? 
How has it been surrounded for the last ten years, ever since we 
took possession of the new wings of this Capitol? By cow-pastures, 
hog-pastures, the debris of the work, mud, horse-cars, horse-stables, 
and a railway depot. This Capitol of the greatest Nation of the 
world, a building which has cost us between fifteen and twenty 
million dollars, we entirely neglect in its surroundings. It is a 
shame and a disgrace to the American name. 

I am as much in favor of saving money, as much for retrench- 
ment, as much for carefully scanning expenditures, as any other 
man. But as a Representative of the American people, I do protest 
that we have long enough left this Capitol in this disgraceful situa- 
tion, and it is time that we swept away the trash which surrounds it, 
and inclosed the grounds and put them into some decent shape.. Do 
that before you talk about making parks for the benefit of the people 
who reside here. This would be for their benefit as much as a pjirk. 
At the same time it would be an honor and a pride to the American 



150 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

natne. I wish when our constituents visited us here in Washington 
that we could take pride in showing them the surroundings of the 
Capitol as well as the rooms inside of it. We garnish and paint 
and gild inside here. We manufacture atmosphere, at a very great 
expense (laughter), which nearly kills us. (Continued laughter.) 
We take steps to fill our rooms with statuary and works of art from 
the hands of the best artists in the world, as you all know, at very 
great expense. And yet we refuse the little money that may be 
necessary to make the grounds around this elegant building decent; 
so that when you step out into the open air, unless it is upon the 
back side of the Capitol — for it is a very singular fact that the front 
of the Capitol is its rear, and that the back side is the front side 
of this Capitol — unless you step out at the rear of the Capitol you 
see nothing but horse-cars, dragged by old broken-down hacks 
tingling their little bells as they drag the cars across the Capitol 
grounds. 

If you look down a little distance here to the side of the grounds, 
just on one side you see an immense horse-stable which supplies the 
whole country around with manure for the gardens; and even upon 
the Capitol grounds are horse-stables; the stables of the Senate and 
House of Representatives, of the doorkeepers and messengers, are 
upon the very grounds of this Capitol. And yet you are proposing 
to legislate to make a park for the people of the District of Colum- 
bia v\4iile you sit here with this stench under your noses! 



DUTY MUST BE MET. 



HON. JOHN SCOTT. OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



(Closing paragraph of speech delivered in the United States 
Setiaite on the Ku Klux organization March 23d, 1871.) 

B-ut, sir, duty must be met. I have no desire to overdraw 
this i>icture. If I could, by stretching forth my hand over these 



IN THE AMEPwICAN CONGRESS. 151 

southern States, restore them all to peace and quietude, stop this 
disorder, no man would more willingly do it. All the feelings of 
my heart go out in the warmest desire for the peace and security of 
the South. Brothers of my own blood are there, and I would be 
recreant to all the dictates of duty, as well as of humanity, if I 
said one word that was calculated to give a wrong impression as 
to the true state of affairs. I do not wish to do it. I wish to see 
the honest men, the true men, of the Democratic party in the South 
stand up in the front, as ex-Governor Reid did, and stay the waves 
of this seething mob, lest ere long their own homes and hearth- 
stones be buried in the general anarchy that must ensue. We want 
not the government of the mob in this land. We want a Govern- 
ment in which the law will be supreme, in which (quoting the 
thought of another, for I have not his language), supreme justice 
will moderate the whole tone and tenor of public morals. Justice 
is the object at which all Governments should aim. Justice is at 
once the brightest emanation of the Gospel and the greatest attri- 
bute of God. It teaches the lofty that he cannot sin with 
impunity. It teaches the lowly that the law is at once his protec- 
tion and his right. And I trust that before this Congress rises, if 
we can do nothing else, we shall put some law on the statute book 
which shall satisfy the people of this land and of the world that 
we wish again, instead of disorder and strife, to inaugurate the 
reign of that supreme justice which introduces order and peace and 
love into a world which but for her would be a wild waste of 
passion. 



THE PEOPLE WILL YET SPEAK 



HON. FERNANDO WOOD, OF NEW YORK. 



(Closing paragraph of speech delivered in the House of Repre- 
sentatives March 30th, 1871, during the consideration of the bill to 



152 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

enforce the provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the Consti- 
tution.) 

****** * * ** 

Our taxpayers are ridden by oppressive taxation, our mercantile 
marine is rottening at our wharves, the American flag is seen no 
more in foreign waters, our public credit is depreciated, and the- 
only constitutional currency known to the country in Democratic 
times, gold and silver, has vanished from the public gaze, and we 
fear forever driven from view. The informer and revenue spy is 
prowling around our domiciles, examining into all our private, do- 
mestic, individual, and personal affairs in order to hunt up "the 
pound of flesh" which the Government seeks, to be given away in 
subsidy schemes and to maintain the plundering army of Black Re- 
publican hirelings. 

The people wonder at all this. They had been taught to believe 
that there were statesmen at the head of this Government, that there 
were men here capable of grasping these great political problems and 
working out the destinies of the country just emerging from a civil 
war, leaving us with an enormous public debt and an oppressive 
system of internal and external taxation. Instead of this being 
done by those in charge of public affairs, the great interests of the 
country are neglected, while the people are driven away from all 
their pursuits of life and have no hope, no recourse. 

Ah, Mr Speaker, pass your bill, but there is a greater power 
than the military of the land. There is a potential power of public 
opinion; there is the almighty voice of American freemen. I heard 
it yesterday in New Hampshire; we shall hear it to-morrow in Con- 
necticut; we will then hear of it from California. And then from 
State to State, from North to South, from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, it will be heard. The sober second thought of the Ameri- 
can people will come to sweep the Goths and Vandals from the 
places which know them now, but which will soon know them no 
more forever. 

Sir, I have in these feeble remarks attempted to deal justly 
with this great subject. I feel that a crisis is upon the country. I 
feel that, after thirty years' public experience, in my last days, I 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 153 

may see the last expiring throe of my country if this bill is to be- 
come a law; that a silent revolution has gone over the American 
people; that our form of government itself has been subverted; that 
the theory of republicanism, founded upon free public opinion, has 
been forgotten; that, prostrate to the will of power, imperialism is 
to be created and to be placed in the hands of the President of the 
United States. 

Sir, all I can say is that we shall make to it the opposition which 
our consciences and our oaths of office and our duty to the people 
of the whole country demand, representing your constituencies 
when you fail to do so, doing our utmost for the defense of the 
Constitution and of the rights of the American people. 



LET US TRY KINDNESS. 



HON. JOHN B. STORM, OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



(Closing paragraph of a speech on the Fourteenth Amendment, 

delivered in the House of Representatives March 31st, 1871.) 
*^**** * * ** 

And right here, can we not learn a lesson from the history of 
Ireland? The oppression of Ireland was persevered in by the Eng- 
lish Government for centuries. For ages the cry went up from the 

oppressed people for relief from harsh and unjust laws. Her patriots 
and defenders were imprisoned; they suffered death upon the gal- 
lows, or banished as convicts to the dark forests of Tasmania. 
It was but recently that the English Government attempted a better 
way of dealing with the Irish people; but recently has she learned 
that the mild sway of just and benign laws is more potent than 
standing armies. But the act of grace and concession has come too 
late to Ireland. Her heart has become set like flint against any 
appeal now. If what England has done within the last two years 
had been done at the beginning of the present century, Fenianism, 



154 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

like a ghost, would not raise its horrid head to the terror of Eng- 
lish statesmen. It hangs like a cloud upon the hopes of that nation. 
In case of a foreign war, she cannot rely upon that nation whose 
soldiers won for the Iron Duke his glory, and of whom he was 
justly proud. 

Shall we repeat this folly in regard to the South? They sinned, 
but most grievously have they answered for it. They were honest 
in their convictions, I believe, and fought bravely to maintain them; 
but their offenses were nevertheless pardonable. They fought for 
their "peculiar institutions;" but the slave is now a freeman, in- 
vested with all his rights, while the master has lost his to a great 
extent, and is now represented in this Hall and in the Legislatures of 
the States by. his former slave. Death has been active, especially 
among the leaders of the rebellion. Most of them are in their 
graves. Others, broken in spirit, ruined in fortune, their hopes 
crushed, have sunken into obscurity; and the balance of them walk 
like Pariahs, the land of their birth. 

Is it not time to see what kindness might do? If God dealt 
with us as we deal with the rebels, what would become of us? If a 
father dealt so with an erring child, what would become of the home 
circle? Let us labor for the good time coming, when peace shall 
wave its everlasting green over our beloved land; when the bitter 
memories of our recent inglorious war shall be obliterated, and the 
fond recollections of our united achievements of former and better 
days make us a free, happy, and united people. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 155 



CIVIL STRIFE EVER THE PRETEXT FOR THE 

DESTRUCTION OF THE LIBERTIES 

OF THE PEOPLE. 



HON. R. T. W. DUKE, OF VIRGINIA. 



(Extract from speech delivered April 3d, 1871. in ihe House of 
Representatives on the Fourteenth Amendment.) 
****** * * ** 

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, history teaches us that the enemies 
of freedom, have ever made civil strife and tumult the pretext for 
destroying the liberties of the people. This is illustrated all along 
the track of ancient and modern history. I will cite a few exam- 
ples. Sulla, returning from the suppression of a revolt in Greece, 
encountered in civil war the followers of Marius, and after their 
overthrow, became dictator and absolute master^ of Rome. Julius 
Caesar, crowned with laurels, fresh from his victories over rebel- 
lious Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, scattered the armies of Pompey, 
and, while rejecting the title and crown of king, assuijied all the 
attributes of emperor of Rome. In France, the revolt of the 
Huguenots was soon followed by the murder of Coligny and /the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew; and the people harassed by civil dis- 
cord, submitted to the absolute rule of the Louises. The dead calm 
of despotism was preferred to civil strife. And again the suppres- 
sion of the revolt in LaVendee was quickly followed by the reign of 
terror; and that was soon succeeded by the consulate and empire of 
the first Napoleon. I trust our rulers do not intend to imitate these 
examples. If they do, then, sir, I desire to call their attention to 
one bright exception to the dark picture which I have drawn.. I 
refer you to that country from which we have drawn our language 
and most of our institutions and laws. However we may dispute 
over the Alabama claims, or the fishery question, I hope the day is 
far distant when we shall cease to remember that our ancestors were 



156 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

the countrymen of Shakspeare and Milton, Newton and Locke, 
Blackstone and Hale, Sidney and Hampden. In England, while 
revolt, rebellion, and civil strife may for a short time have been 
followed by repression, yet in the end the result has always been an 
advance in the direction of freedom; and to-day, if the British Par- 
liament were to confer upon the queen's ministers the powers which 
it is now proposed to confer upon our Republican President, there 
would be a revolution in less than twenty-four hours 

Sir, I still have faith in the Anglo-Saxon blood of the American 
people. So soon as the mists of prejudice and the clouds of pas- 
sion, engendered by the late war, shall have passed away, they will 
discover that those whom they had placed as "sentinels upon the 
outer walls" of freedom, while signaling to them an imaginary foe 
upon the far-off southern horizon, and warning them against 
dangers which do not exist, have themselves been busily engaged in 
sapping and mining the very foundations of the citadel of their 
liberties, the Constitution of the United States. And when the 
people shall discover this there will come up to these Halls a voice 
of condemnation so loud and deep that it may well be taken for 
the "voice of God. ' 

Sir, this storm of popular indignation has already swept over the 
distant prairies of Missouri. You may hear, too, its angry mutter- 
ings along the blue mountains of Pennsylvania in the warning voice 
of her Republican Governor. And but the other day it shook the 
granite hills of New Hampshire to their very base; and the political 
graves in which the party in power fondly hoped they had forever 
buried the friends of the Constitution, have opened and have given 
up, not dead men's dry bones, but active, living men, who are now 
in our midst! 

To the faithful shepherds, who have watched during the long, 
dark night of a Nation's agony, there has at length appeared the 
bright morning star in the east, which heralds the approach of the 
glorious dawn of peace and joy and deliverance. But when Herod, 
the king, and his high priests heard these things they were exceed- 
ing wroth, and sent forth and sought to slay the innocents. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 157 

THE FIERY ORDEAL. 



HON. W. W. VAUGHAN, OF TENNESSEE. 



(Extract of speech in the House of Representatives April 3d, 

1871.) 

****** * * ** 

Now, Mr. Ragland says, sir, that the wonder will ever remain 
with the philosopher and statesman that we should have passed 
this fiery ordeal with so little to debase our manhood. So say we 
all. I wish that I had it in my power to light up the dark political 
night through which my people have passed with the living, blazing 
torch of truth as it is, so that every man and woman in the northern 
States might read the endurance, the heroic endurance and patience, 
that have characterized the people of my much-loved States since 
1865. Gentlemen, you can never know all that we have endured. 
Go back to 1865. See the armies of the confederate States surren- 
der to the armies of the Government. They stack their arms; they 
furl the flag they followed vainly for four long, dark, bloody, weary 
years, to be unfurled no more forever. They were told that the 
Oiowl of the war-dog was to be heard no more in the land. On the 
graves of their fallen comrades had they dropped the silent tear. 
Under these circumstances, strangely solemn, did they pledge their 
honor that they would again return to their loyalty, to the Govern- 
ment of the United States. And for the pledges of the war-worn 
veteran I have ever had the highest respect. 

And the good faith with which the confederate soldier has 
respected his parole but settles me in my convictions. See him 
when he takes up his long, weary march from the field of surrender 
back to his native, though desolate and much-loved Tennessee. 
What has he left? His will, his muscle, his soil, his climate, and 
his seasons. He goes to his home and to work; you rarely see him 
at any of the public places. Wisdom said, "Pour oil upon the 
troubled waters; heal up the old sores;" but the Republican porty 
of my State said: "No, they shall have but one right, J.nd that 



158 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

shall be the privilege of paying all the taxes." You send r.s a few 
missionaries from this side of the river to teach iis how to manage 
our own affairs; and with the few whites that they find in my State 
you organize the negroes into a party and you drive the people, the 
intelligence of the country, from the ballot-box, the very men that 
are interested in peace, order, and law. 

You cannot say it was because these men were rebels that 
they were refused the right of the ballot. Not at all; for whenever 
the confederate soldier proposed to vote the Radical ticket they 
took him right in. If they sent him to Congress he was soon par- 
doned and got his seat. Hundreds of citizens that have been true 
to the Government were refused simply because they proposed to 
vote the Democratic ticket. I remember an old roldier of 1812, 
eighty-two years old, who had fought with the hero of the Hermit- 
age in his every engagement on this continent, asking me to go to 
the registrar and procure for him a certificate to vote. I thought it 
best for him to go in person. He went. I waited for his return, 
and when he told me that he had been refused, the big tears rolled 
down his cheek. What was his sin? He was a Jackson Democrat. 
Gentlemen, the right of the ballot is a very sacred right, and of it 
has been beautifully said that it falls — 

"As snowfiakes fall upon the sod; 

But executes a freeman's will, 
As lightning does the will of God." 

This moving menagerie of political hucksters were not content 
with having enslaved a once proud and gallant State, and that they 
then held the liberties and the property of a whole people in the 
hollow of their hands; they must exercise their power with insolent 
severity to its utmost extent. 

In three years, under Radical rule, our State debt was increased 
$20,000,000. Our cities were ruined. Upon application to the 
Legislature by irresponsible corporations, from three to twelve 
county commissioners were appointed, and by the order of said 
commissioners, under the powers with which they were clothed, 
counties were taxed from two to four hundred thousand dollars, and 



IN THE AMERICAN CONORESS. 159 

by them the county bonds were issued and delivered to said cor- 
porations, and this, too, without the vote or consent of the counties. 
Not one vote was polled for or against the taxes so levied. I 
would ask the gentlemen on the other side of the House to take 
home to themselves, and answer me, under similar circumstances, 
would your people have complained or not? 

Now, Mr. Speaker, I wish to say one word to the friends of this 
bill; that is, go back and see your people before you make it the 
law of the land; go and take counsel with prudent, safe men of 
your districts, the old men. I do not believe, gentlemen, that our 
people are ready to make this radical change in the form of our 
Government, and that self-government has proven a failure, or that 
they desire you as their Representatives to give all of their rights 
under the Constitution into the hands of one single individual. 

Gentlemen, wisely have you selected your Napoleon, an ambi- 
tious and brilliant young ofificer. In times of profound peace you 
ask that he may be clothed with this only argument, the bayonet. 
Once again would I urge you, go and confer with your people. 
Could we call back from the spirit land the gifted Clay, and could 
he stand upon this floor as in other days, what, think you, gentle- 
men, would be his advice to us? I read from his speech made in 

1818: 

* * * * 

Gentlemen, heed the warning voice of the patriot statesman. 
I want a good government. I desire it for my children and those 
that are to come after me. I love my country; I love the memory 
of her mighty heroes; I love her scarred and mutilated Constitu- 
tion; I love liberty; I love safety, peace, law, and order. I hate 
disorder; I hate murder. But yet, sirs, I hate the evidences of mili- 
tary despotism, as clearly indicated in your bill, ten thousand 
times worse; since disorder may be remedied and murder may be 
punished, but our liberties once lost may never be regained. 
Pause, gentlemen, and reflect whether your triumph in the passage 
of this bill may not be a victory over the Constitution of your coun- 
try, and a triumph purchased with the liberties of the people. I 



160 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

pray you, let not the fate and fortunes of our people pass into the 
hands of an ambitious military chieftain. 

Mr. Speaker, if we had more of the patriotic impulses that ani- 
mated the bosoms of the faithful few that met the Adamses at 
Independence Hall in 1776, this bill would not be entertained for 
one single moment. Our fathers, unlike you, were jealous of the 
executive and legislative departments of the Government, and all of 
the amendments made to your Constitution by them were designed 
to secure the rights of the people as against the powers of those 
departments. 

Gentlemen, one word and I have done. I desire to say to the 
Republicans that propose to stand by their country in this the 
hour of her peril that the gratitude of a mighty nation will ever be* 
yours; for, sirs, like noble heroes worthy of freedom have you 
lifted yourselves above the shackles of party and propose to stand 
by the Constitution of your country. And to my Democratic 
friends I simply submit this sentiment: 

"Stand by the right 'mid the gloom and the sorrow 
That hang lowering over the prospect to-day; 
For the truth will shine brighter and clearer to-morrow, 
While darkness and doubt shall be driven away." 



WE WANT PEACE. 



HON. P. M. B. YOUNG, OF GEORGIA. 



(Extract from speech in the House of Representatives April 4th, 

1871.) 

****** * * ** 

Sir, we want peace; that peace you have so long promised us, 
that peace which is guaranteed by the Constitution, and which 
to-day is enjoyed by the people of every State in the North and 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 161 

in the West. We only ask to be permitted to participate in the 
Government, and to feel that it is our Government as well as yours. 
Restore to us our old Government; we wish to be citizens of none 
other. We want no other Government; it is the Government of our 
fathers and of yours; it is the Government we desire to transmit 
to our posterity. The Government of the United States admin- 
istered according to the Constitution, I believe is the best Govern- 
ment in the world. 

For one, sir, I can say without successful contradiction that 
since the fall of the banner of the lost cause I have labored zealously 
to smooth over the bitterness and the asperities of the past, and I 
have done all in my power to bring peace, quiet, and harmony to 
our distracted country. Lawless acts have been committed in some 
localities of the South, but to no such extent as has been alleged 
so often in this House. Lawless acts occur everywhere. They are 
not produced in the South from any spirit of disloyalty to the 
Government; they are but the natural offspring of oppression, 
insult, and outrage, perpetrated upon the people, and for which they 
have no legal redress. 

Mr. Speaker, there is a remedy for all these troubles. Restore 
to those people their rights under the Constitution; restore to them 
the responsibilities of citizenship in the Government; extend to 
them the hand of fellowship, and let them know that they are once 
more restored to the confidence of the Government. Lift from 
them all their legal and political disabilities, pardon all their 
political offenses. Then, sir, you will have a country, not only 
bound together by its mountains, its rivers, its laws, and its common 
interests, but a country and a Government bound and cemented 
by the affections of its people. Pardon them. It is the spirit of 
peace; it is the spirit of justice; it is the spirit of charity; it is the 
command of God. 



162 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 



A SOUTHERNER'S IDEA OF A CARPET-BAGGER. 



HON. E. I. GOLLADAY, OF TENNESSEE. 



(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, April 4th, 1871.) 

Gentlemen have complained in this debate that every man of the 
North coming among us is dubbed with the name of ''carpet- 
bagger." Sir, they have an entire misconception of the meaning 
of the term as used among our people. A carpet-bagger is one 
who has not even a carpetbag in which to pack his all. He comes 
among us to manipulate the Loyal Leagues, control negro voters, 
and get office. He comes among us to breed dissensions, provoke 
strife, and make capital for the life of his party North by exciting 
to bloodshed and outrage. His mission is not one of peace and 
love, and when he can no longer succeed in getting office he is at 
once a bird of passage. He has no idea of eating his bread in the 
sweat of his brow, or turning an honest penny by some judicious 
labor. How he arrives, whether foot-back or upon the charity of a 
free pass from some mimigration society, is not always easily told. 
His baggage is done up in a bundle, and in obedience to that old- 
time notice of hotels, that "passengers without baggage must pay in 
advance," he puts up his bundle with the landlord as baggage. He 
starts out to find some "truly loil" resident who can instruct him 
as to the presidency of the Loyal League. He introduces himself 
by signs and grips into the confidence of such. He finds out 
whether there is to be an election soon. It matters little about the 
salary of the office, if there is any money to pass through his official 
hands; he knows he can provide for himself. He visits the League, 
and becomes a candidate; he repairs to his hotel and unfolds his 
bundle, consisting of a few orders from the "Freedmen's Bureau," 
a picture or two of John Brown, an old flaxen duster which has 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 163 

not seen the washerwoman since it was purchased or picked up in 
the purlieus of some northern city, and an old brass spur, perhaps, 
"lifted" from the War Department as he passed through Washing- 
ton to see if he could not get a troop of the Army to protect 
him on his visit South. He gets into office, robs the people, and 
flees the land, because, as he claims, it is no longer safe by reason 
of the Ku Klux. Methinks I see him now as he arrives in Wash- 
ington. His eyes are meekly lifted toward that great mansion at 
the other end of the avenue. He starts for the White House, and 
enters the presence of our excellent President singing that plaintive 

old melody: 

"Here. Lord, I give myself away, 

'Tis all that I can do." 
He recites the hobgoblin stories of the terrible Ku Klux; and I 
fancy now I can see the eyes of the President overrun with tender- 
ness, and hear the dulcet notes, as they resound softly and comfort- 
ingly through the fretted ceilings and rich tapestries of that splendid 
mansion: 

"Come rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer; 

Though the herd hath fled from thee thy home is still here. 

Here still is the smile which no cloud can o'ercast. 

And the heart and the hand all thine own to the last." 
Yes, sir, a mission to Pernambuco or Timbuctoo is soon 
arranged, or a postoffice South, and the glorious openings for 
future promotion in the glorious isle of San Domingo are discussed 
with bounding hopes. Blessed Carpet-bagger! In the North you 
found it hard to steer clear of jails and penitentiaries, but having 
visited the land of Ku Kluxes thou art freedom's now, and fame's, 
one of the few — to be provided for! 

For such characters as these is it any wonder, Mr. Speaker, 
that the South has no more love than the North? Are we not bone 
of your bone and flesh of your flesh, and shall we be turned 
into a Botany bay? And the scalawag is the counterpart of such a 
character as I have drawn, only he is a plant of native growth— an 
excrescence on the body-politic, sent to fill out some wise design 
not yet discovered in the book of fate. 



164 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

GIVE US AMNESTY. 
HON. E. I. GOLLADAY, OF TENNESSEE. 



(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives April 4th, 1871.) 

* >i: * -^ H< ♦ ■-!: * >ic * 

Mr. Speaker, when it is remembered that the war heaved to its 
deepest depth the structure of southern society, and suddenly 
changed the education and practices of a century, we are astonished 
that the South has done so well and made such strides toward 
redemption. What a contrast she offers with France, now free of 
the invader, but yet vomiting blood and heaving in untold throes Of 
misery and agony. 

The problem for adjusting all troubles South is simple and 
plain. Strange all do not see it. "The world is governed too 
much." Give us amnesty, extend to us the right hand of fellow- 
ship, and lift us up from the degradation and humiliation of ene- 
mies, and make us brothers by restoring confidence and good-will. 
Then, sir, shall we be happy, and not until then. 

Sir, I am reminded of an illustrious incident in history, in the 
record of an old Indian chief. When General Jackson had con- 
quered the Creeks, and when their old leader and chief, Weathers- 
ford, stood a captive in his presence. General Jackson told him his 
nation and people could be saved by submitting in good faith to the 
Government of the United States. The answer of the chief was 
that he desired peace and order, that his people might be relieved 
of their suflferings. Said he: "Sir, my warriors can no longer 
hear my voice; their bones are at Talledega, Emuckfau, and Toho- 
peka. I have not surrendered myself thoughtlessly. While there 
were chances of success, I never left my post nor sued for peace. But 
my people are gone, and my brave's are dead, and I now ask it for 
my nation and myself. On the miseries and misfortunes brought 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 165 

upon my country I look back with deepest sorrow, and wish to avert 
still greater calamities. You will exact no terms of a conquered 
people but such as they should accede to, for you are brave and 
generous! And if they are opposed, you shall find me among the 
sternest enforcers of obedience. Those who would still hold out 
can be influenced only by a mean spirit of revenge, and to this they 
must not and shall not sacrifice the remnant of their country. You 
have told our people, go and be forgiven and be safe. And, sir, 
they shall listen to it." 

May I not be permitted, Mr. Speaker, to add that such is the 
true spirit, caught from a southern-born type, of every son of the 
South who adhered to her fortunes in the great w^ar, and express 
the hope we may all learn wisdom and practice it, as caught from 
these two illustrious men, and cease this insensate and fanatic cry, 
"John Brown's body lies buried in the ground, but his soul keeps 
marching on!" Let him see in that charnel-house of death which 
he invoked and earned by his bloody hands and crimes, and let 
the great American union, with its noble Constitution, march on to 
that day, foretold in prophecy, when — 

"No more the sun shall gild the rising morn. 

Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn, 

But lost, dissolved, in one superior ray, 

O'erflow^ the courts of earth and heaven!" 
Sir, Philip of Macedon educated with tlie bayonet the once free 
and glorious land of Greece, but it was found, when his instructions 
were completed, that the cold and clammy hand of death was on 
her brow! The nations of Europe educated with force the free-born 
ideas of the once fair land of Poland, but the lecture room was at 
once exchanged for the dismal vaults of the grave! England has 
for years been educating unhappy Ireland with the bayonet, and 
sir — 

"The harp that once through Tara's halls 
The soul of music shed, 

Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls 
As if that soul were fled." 



IGG ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Let us profit by such examples lest we be called to stand beside 
the fratricidal grave of the South, in which will be found buried 
love, freedom, and all we hold dear to our hearts! Restore the 
South to amnesty and equality, and let her rest from persecution 
and oppression! Our embassadors bring you the same tidings 
which the British embassadors carried to the Roman patrician in 
that celebrated letter called "The groans of Britain." "The bar- 
barians," said they, "on the one hand chase us into the sea, the 
sea, on the other, throws us back on the barbarians, and we have 
only the hard choice left us of perishing by the sword or the waves." 
And so we say, "The Radicals, carpet-baggers, and negro stupidity 
chase us upon the rocks of reconstruction, and reconstruction 
chases us back into their hands, and we ^re to be left to die either 
by misrule or the sword of martial law." Reject the bill and give us 
peace. 



HOW HAVE THE MIGHTY FALLEN! 



HON. WILLIAM WILLLAMS, OF INDIANA. 



(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, April 5th, 1871.) 

Mr. Speaker: Had Solomon lived in our day, surrounded by 
the circumstances which surround us, he would never have made the 
declaration that there was nothing new under the sun, for it is 
certainly new that in our boasted and free Republic there should 
be found a political party claiming as its founders Jefferson, Madi- 
son, and Jackson, and numbering in its organization millions of 
devout worshipers at the shrine of blind party adherence, who 
to-day stand in the highway of progress and civilization and 
attempt to block up the way of the advancing columns who are 
pressing on to a grander and nobler Sestiny. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 167 

Sir, I would give to the Democratic party full credit for its 
noble achievements in the days of its purity, when fidelity to the 
Constitution and integrity in the administration of the civil affairs 
of the Government were the leading characteristics which marked its 
birth and followed it to mature manhood. Sir, I would with no 
ruthless hand pluck one laurel from the wreath that encircles the 
brow of the Democratic fathers who now sleep in the silent tomb 
of a country to-day, over whose vast territory our flag still floats, 
and whose bright jewels upon its folds proclaim protection to every 
American citizen. 

Sir, I could go to Monticello and the Hermitage, where sleep 
Jefiferson and Jackson, and kneel upon their green surface, and, 
remembering the sacred deposits within, I could devoutly pray that 
the spirits of the departed statesmen and heroes might be reani- 
mated and galvanized into life to go forth to their degenerate and 
fallen children, who to-day are willing worshipers at the shrine of 
treason and inspire them to higher and holier purposes and a 
loftier patriotism. Sir, how are the mighty fallen! The impress 
of decay is written upon all things material, and as I speak to-day 
in the council chamber of a free and patriotic people and as the 
Representative of one hundred and twenty thousand of her people 
for my country. I see a ghastly specter of what is called Democ- 
racy walking as a pestilence in darkness, or the destruction that 
wasteth at noonday, and shameless and with brazen effrontery pro- 
claiming that, under that fiag and under its protection, to give to 
the American citizen protection to life, liberty, and property is a 
violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution of our fathers. 



168 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 



DE^IOCRATS CRY UNCONSTITUTIONAL. 



HON. WILLIAM WILLIAMS. OF INDIANA. 



(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, April 5th, 1871.) 

Whenever the rights of the people are invaded, and the secret 
organizations of the Democratic party in the South, masked in 
horrid costume, and bound by secret and terrible oaths, under 
cover of midnight, plunge the murderer's knife into the heart of 
the loyal Republican, whose only crime is defending the principles 
of free government, who take from home, wife, and children, their 
only protector in the hours of darkness and hang him to the nearest 
tree because he votes the Republican ticket — ah, more, who are the 
whippers of women and the scourgers of cripples, the halt, maimed, 
and blind; who are instrumental as the suborners of witnesses, who 
bribe their judges, and place in the jury box perjured accomplices 
and villains, who let the guilty escape, and the local and civil law 
becomes a farce and a mockery — when these things are to be cor- 
rected and life and liberty protected by congressional legislation, 
then a holy horror surrounds our Democratic friends on the other 
side of the House, and in an instant the sonorous voice of my friend 
from Wisconsin (Mr. Eldridge), and the sweet and melodious 
voice of the genial and pleasant gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Cox), and the commanding voice of the distinguished leader of the 
Democracy from New York (Mr. Brooks), are heard shouting 
"Revolution, revolution, revolution; a violation of the Constitu- 
tion!" 

Sir, I will do my Democratic friends the justice to say that 
while I have no confidence in their patriotism when it conflicts with 
party success or party triumph, I have abundant confidence in their 
consistency. When the leaders of their party in the South, who 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 169 

had been fed, nurtured, and educated at the expense of the Govern- 
ment, raised the impious hand of rebellion to tear down our flag 
from a national fort; who stole from the arsenals of the North 
our cannon and arms, to destroy the life of the Nation and dismem- 
ber our Republic and make slavery its corner-stone, and upon the 
ruins of a free government build up a slave oligarchy to rule the 
empire; who robbed our Treasury and divided the spoils, and cast 
lots for our heritage, to bury it forever — when this was attempted, 
and the Republican party sounded the tocsin of alarm, and the 
clarion voice of Lincoln was heard above the rebel cannon calling 
his countrymen to our defense, the Democrats said it was unconsti- 
tutional to preserve the life of the Nation! When the President 
called for the seventy-five thousand troops to defend our national 
capital from the invading hosts of traitorous Democrats of the 
South, the cry waxed louder, "unconstitutional!" When slaves, 
loyal to freedom and humanity, entered the lines of our Army and 
brought food to our famishing and suffering soldiers, and were 
refused to be given back to their rebel masters whose hands were 
red with the blood of our martyred heroes, Democracy shouted, 
"unconstitutional!" When, to save the life of the nation, the im- 
mortal proclamation of Lincoln, freeing four millions of the dusky 
sons of Ham, was borne upon the telegraphic wires, and the air 
was rent with the shouts of hallelujahs to God in the highest. 
Democrats said, "unconstitutional," "a violation of the fugitive slave 
law," a law that made every northern white man perform the 
duties of the southern bloodhound to his southern master. When 
money and cannon were wanted for the defenses of our national 
unity, Democrats said, "unconstitutional." When the Democratic 
party met in national convention at Chicago, in 1864, they said by 
solemn resolution the war was a failure, and was the wrong remedy 
for secession; and my venerable friend from New York, over the 
way (Mr. Wood), who was a delegate to that convention, made a 
prayer for peace. 

Sir, I fancy in my imagination, I see my distinguished and vener- 
able-looking friend, who is now in his seat, down upon his knees in 
that distinguished assemblage of peace Democrats, his locks having 



170 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

grown gray in political sin, and just about to pass over Jordan, his 
eyes looking imploringly to heaven, crying, "Peace! peace! peace!" 
and hear him say, "Call back our victorious armies who are con- 
quering rebellion, and divide the great land that God has given to 
us and who had decreed that our Republic should be one." 

Mr. Speaker, every victory to our loyal armies was "unconstitu- 
tional." When Sherman took that grand march to the sea, ex- 
celling in grandeur the proudest achievements of the elder Napo- 
leon, or Wellington, or any dead or living hero. Democrats said it 
was "unconstitutional!" When our proud chieftain. Grant, with 
the boys in blue, took from Lee his sword, and the last armed rebel 
plead for mercy. Democrats said it was "unconstitutional." When 
we sought to reconstruct the rebellious and disloyal States and 
bring them back under republican forms of government, and place 
these wandering stars of the empire in their proper political orbits, 
Democrats said "military usurpation" and "unconstitutional!" 
When we heard them knocking at the door of Congress for admis- 
sion, with constitutions Republican in form, and we had killed the 
fatted calf and were encircling their necks with the golden chain of 
the Republican party, of equality before the law, and protection to 
life, liberty, person, and property, you Democrats solidly voted to 
keep them out, and shouted in coarse, guttural tones, "unconstitu- 
tional!" 

And now, when your disbanded confederate brothers, who, in 
violation of their parole, and in disguise and masked, in the dead 
hours of the night are holding their meetings in woods and 
caves, plotting the murder and assassination of Union men and 
poor defenseless women, and when Government revenue officers are 
menaced, and the cry of the victims comes to us from nearly every 
southern State to shield them from the murderous hands of these 
villains and assassins who prowl masked at midnight, shouting their 
exultations in the midst of their devilish and bloody carnival, you 
Democrats say "unconstitutional," "revolution," "oppression;" and 
when we attempt to amend the Constitution, you swear that is un- 
constitutional. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 171 

Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt but when our Democratic friends 
shall have uttered their last shout on earth against Republicanism 
and progress and protection to American citizens, and shall appear 
at the great judgment seat, and when Satan shall close up his bill 
of sale, on these Democratic disloyal politicians who offered no 
prayer during the entire war for our success, but clogged up the 
wheels of progress, they will, when he calls them home to himself, 
say to him, ''Satan, this is clearly unconstitutional." (Great laugh- 
ter.) 



LIFE AND LIBERTY OF THE CITIZEN. 



HON. C. L. MERRIAM, OF NEW YORK. 



(Extracts from a speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, April 5th, 1871.) 

Mr. Speaker, as a Republican Representative from the State 
of New York, where Democracy bears imperial sway, (the nation 
knows by what means obtained), I may, perhaps, be pardoned for 
listening with impatience to the general onslaughts upon the Repub- 
lican party from gentlemen upon the other side of the House, and 
especially from the honorable gentleman from New York (l^r. 
Wood), who proclaims to the world that it is the intention of the 
Republican party to "erect a military despotism upon the ruins of 
a republic." Such utterances would shock the hopes of liberty- 
loving men throughout the world were they not so in conflict with 
the instincts and history of parties in America as to be transparent 
to all intelligent men that it is intended only as partisan food, to 
further impose upon the credulity of an ignorant Tammany con- 
stituency. We in New York, who live under the baneful shadow 
of pure and undefiled "Democracy," where justice is forced to hide 
its head in shame, and capital trembles before its audacious greed, 



172 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

are painfully aware of the tricks of Satan to steal the livery Oj 
Heaven wherewith to serve Democracy. 

Mr. Speaker, nothing so well illustrates the magnanimity of the 
Republican party and its respect for constitutional law as its acts 
of reconstruction since the war; and nothing, perhaps, so well illus-| 
trates the animus of the misguided sons of treason and their allies, 
the Democratic party of the North, as the way they have met the 
generosity of a triumphant nation. 

With full powers of legislation in our hands to punish by exile 
or the scaffold, we have extended the right hand of fellowship and 
welcomed the once armed enemies of our Union back into the bless- 
ing of nationality. 

With power to form the conquered soil into territories, to be 
governed by the party in power, with a magnanimity unparalleled! 
in the history of nations, we have restored former States with the 
rights of self-government, and bid them a "God-speed" in the 
brotherhood of a common greatness. Republican sentiment only, 
waited evidence of their sincerity to remove finally all disabilities; 
and as the Congress of the United States stood waiting and ready, 
we were staggered by the cries of loyal southern citizens, driven in 
terror from their homes by masked bands of midnight assassins. 
We pause in silence and sorrow as every breeze from the South 
comes laden with the cry of anguish. 

We find that wherever the black archangel of Democracy rides 
upon the night a reign of blood and terror follows in his track 
more savage than the bloodhounds of slavery, more damning than 
the Democratic feast at Andersonville. 

The Democracy of the North, in pretended unbelief, stand in 
solid phalanx a guard of honor round about the festive blood-dance 
of its tools, the hideous Ku Klux. Thousands of men are supplied 
from the North with the most modern and expensive breech-load- 
ing rifles. Can any impartial man familiar with the ambitions of 
Tammany doubt from whence they come? If there still lingers in 
any man's mind a single doubt that the Ku Klux are under the 
control of the Democratic party of the North, I ask him to read 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 173 

Tom tjie words of the honorable gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Z^ox), who but yesterday told the world from his seat in this House 
:hat "he had proposed in a Democratic caucus the issuing of an 
iddress appealing to the Ku Klux to abide by the laws of the land." 

Can any sane man, familiar with the evidence that necessitated 
he last presidential message to Congress, longer doubt that we have 
vithin our borders the germs of another rebellion? 

Scarce have the thunder echoes of one civil strife died upon the 
lir before we have mutterings of another storm. 

Scarce has a nation, weary of war, laid aside its emblems of 
Tiourning before we are deafened by the roll of artillery. 

Scarce are a nation's tears dry over the bier of the immortal Lin- 
:oln before we hear the stealthy tread of other midnight assassins. 

Scarce is the grass green over our hero graves when fresh 
graves yawn before us. 

Scarce has a proud nation crushed out one rebellion before we 
Dehold another, and more dastardly, lifting its hideous form to 
stagger the progress of our civilization. 

Is it then in vain that we have extended the right hand of fel- 
owship to our erring brothers of the South? Like the slave- 
lolders' rebellion, this is a political war, a war aimed for power over 
Republicanism. 

Of all the new-made graves not one is filled with a murdered 
Democrat. Of all the widow and orphan tears, daily multiplying 
md crying to Heaven for vengeance, not one is shed over the grave 
Df a Democrat. 

This war, outvying the remorseless savagery of the tomahawk 
md scalping-knife, is all upon one side, all upon the defenceless, 
kvhose only crime is that they are loyal Republicans. It seems but 
1 part of the great drama for political triumph to murder or banish 
;he leaders of the Republican party in the South. If there be no 
:omplicity with Tammany, why does Democracy hesitate to-day to 
legislate to crush this incipient rebellion in the bud? 

If these outrages were perpetrated upon American citizens on 
the high seas, or in any foreign land. Democrats and Republicans 



174 . ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

all over our Republic would burn with the fires of vengeance. If 
an American citizen had returned from a foreign land, as our 
revenue collector, Huggins, returned to Washington last week, with 
the bleeding galls of a hundred lashes upon his back, no power 
under Heaven could have kept even the Democratic members of 
this House in their seats. 

Great Heavens! has it come to this, that party ambition has so 
benumbed the pride and manhood of an American legislator that he 
should stand in this House and shield such barbarism from out- 
raged law! I charge it home upon the consciences of every member 
of this House that he knows scarce an hour passes of the day or 
night but loyal and true men are fleeing in terror to swamps and 
forests before the masked fiends of Democracy, who would gorge' 
upon their quivering hearts. 

Let me say to the Democratic party that if they hope to ride 
into power by such work as this they mistake the spirit of American 
civilization. While they may exult in a false courage over the ap- 
parent discord in the Republican ranks, they forget that ours is a 
Republic of ideas as well as a Republic of individuals, and that as 
we have no purpose but the good of humanity our word battles 
are fought alike in secret caucus and in the open universe, and in 
our conflicts as to the wisest and best mode of action let them not 
misinterpret our differences as an abandonment of principles which 
underlie and sustain the structure of law. order, and good govern- 
ment. Nor is it wise in them to hug the false fantasy of "Repub- 
lican disintegration." An occasional light may fall from our politi- 
cal firmament through an unsatisfied ambition. They are welcome 
to such as these. Republican principles do not depend upon lead- 
ers, to fall when they die. Their abiding place is in the hearts of a 
great and free people, who will welcome any sacrifice to save. 

The indictments against Democracy for its complicity with trea- 
son no man could count. They are written on every page of our 
late conflict. If the Democratic party denies the responsibility of 
originating the war, we know their responsibility for its continuance. 
The blood of our citizens killed in the last year of the war is upon 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 175 

their souls, and they can never hope to wash out its stains, and, if 
we are to judge of the present, they accept the issue and welcome 
the curse. 

We would do no injustice to thousands of good men marching 
to-day, all so blindly, under the banner of Democracy. These 
have no thirst for blood; these carry no incendiary torch to level the 
temples of education to the cold ashes of ignorance; these fatten not 
upon the victims of the stiletto and the lash; nevertheless, while 
they stand in the bodyguard of honor round about the festive blood- 
dance of the Ku Klux Klan, intelligence and patriotism everywhere 
will hold them responsible for its deeds. 
***** * * *** 

In the light of history, have we no reason to suspect that Demo- 
cracy with all its cunning has set aflame the Ku Klux fires? 

Not six months have passed since it stood in the Senate Cham- 
ber, face to face with sixteen thousand soldier dead on the heights 
of Arlington, and demanded that we should remove their bones. 
They would scatter the ashes of our hero dead. They would sell 
the pillow from under his head, and for what? Surely, for no other 
reason than to serve the scum and Lees of treason. But, thank 
God, the sacred instincts of a grateful nation spurned the sacrilege. 
Surely it has been said none too soon "that this nation and the 
human race never needed the Republican party more than to-day." 

Mr. Speaker, the President early told us he should have no 
policy to enforce against the will of the people. Recognizing their 
will in this crisis and his duty, he has called upon us for such legis- 
lation as will protect loyal citizens in the South, and behold, the 
honorable gentleman from New York sees in it a desire to build up 
a military despotism upon the ruins of a Republic. He charges 
our President with a desire to secure by the bayonet his re-election 
in 1872, when, to meet a present emergency, he asks for special 
legislation, the force of vvhich shall expire before said election. 
"Motives of our President!" A man who so aided in saving our 
country, and whose world-acknowledged military renown should be 
the pride of every American, and who has enough of human glory 



176 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

to gratify a single life so brief as ours, and hence can have no "mo- 
tive," as Chief Magistrate, but to serve his country, that the page of 
history shall shine with greater luster upon American fame. 

If it were a Democratic leader, one of the chiefs of Tammany, 
who legislates entire railroads into the pockets of the ring, paving 
their way to power over a prostrate franchise, robbing the State 
of its choicest gifts, so debauching public morals as to peaceably 
enjoy a power to which no foreign potentate dare aspire, well might 
a nation suspect a criminal intent. 



A PICTURE OF SLAVE DAYS. 



HON. C. L. MERRIAM, OF NEW YORK. 



(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, April 5th, 1871.) 

Mr. Speaker, in the year of our Lord 1854, in the slave-market 
of New Orleans, stood, side by side, half a hundred human beings, 
of all ages and both sexes. From among them was taken to the 
auction block a bright-eyed boy of six summers. He was nearly as 
white as our own children in northern homes. There was a care- 
less confidence in his every grace, for the only protecting power on 
earth, where centered his love, stood near, eyeing him with evident 
pride. I heard the cry "Going! going! gone!" and this only joy of 
a slave mother's heart was registered to an Alabama planter for 
$625. 

The mother came next. "Going! going!" but no response from 
the owner of the boy. Turning imploringly to the planter, she 
besought a bid. "Going! going!" yet his lips were sealed. Fall- 
ing upon her knees she implored. The only reply was, "I bought 
him for a body servant and have women enough." "Going! going! 



IX THE AMERICAN CONORESS. 177 

gone!" and she parted from her darling child forever. In the sum- 
mer of the same year, when sailing to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, we 
anchored in the straits of Canso. Weary of the sea, I strolled up 
the hillside to a fisherman's habitation, and was welcomed by a 
colored family who had come from their native home in the sunny 
South to this inhospitable shore, that they might be free. By the 
fireside sat an old white man, a splendid specimen of our proud 
Anglo-Saxon race. Long white hair fell over his shoulders, and 
he seemed a very picture of the patriarchs of old. Excusing a con- 
scious impertinence, I inquired why he was alone with this family, 
in this far-ofif part of the world. Turning toward me. he said: 
"Two years ago I lived a mile over beyond. My wife and sister 
died, I was blind, and should have perished but for these kind peo- 
ple bringing me to their home." "But," said I, addressing the old 
lady, "it don't appear as if you could afiford to take care of him." 
"O, lor," says she, "it doesn't take any more fire to keep us all 
warm than it would if he were not here." "But he has to eat?" 
Sauntering up to the old gentleman, with a generous look, charac- 
teristic of her race, she says, "John, you know you are welcome." 

I stood a moment in silent imagination, beyond, the present hun- 
dred years, when we of to-day shall stand in the presence of impar- 
tial judgment, and as I heard the echoes of slave-chains through the 
desolated chambers of that mother's heart, robbed of God's best 
blessing, it mingled so strangely with those noble words of "wel- 
come," that I saw along down the pathway of our history the sure- 
coming storm of God's vengeance; and when the demon of war 
bathed our land in fraternal blood I recognized a just retribution. 
But when I heard the honorable gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Wood), rise in this House and bid this colored race to the soft em- 
brace of Democracy, remembering their long suffering, their trjjist, 
their patience, I must confess that I, at least, failed to see the cause 
for such a curse. I could find no solution for this change of heart, 
unless it were in the prophetic vision of Wendell Phillips, when 
he foretold a day not far distant when a distinguished representative 
of the Democratic party (Mr. Wood) would boast of African blood 
coursing through his veins. 



178 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

Mr. Speaker, the reverence Democracy has always exhibited in 
the presence of our Constitution is in perfect accord with their rev- 
erence for all things sacred. If Republicans presumed to give it 
elasticity, in order to arm, equip, and save, a cry of injured inno- 
cence filled the air, and they bewailed their sorrow in unaffected 
despair, while they, with unflinching hands, stood jeady to fire the 
train to blow Constitution and country to thin air. 

But, Mr. Speaker, when they raised their impious hands to shatter 
Constitution and country, our Constitution went out to the battle- 
fields with a million brave hearts, and it came back with them when 
"our boys came home with victory at last;" and now, when loyal 
men, in the agonies of a death-struggle, call upon the nation to save. 
Democracy stands with ghastly tread upon the thin lines of "State 
rights" and wildly howls of usurped power, broken oaths, and a 
Constitution trampled in the dust! 

I believe the Constitution is broad enough, high enough, strong 
enough to protect American citizens everywhere, in their lives, 
liberties, and in the pursuit of happiness; and if any man doubts, I 
would say to the terror-stricken, fleeing frpm the torch, the lash, 
the stiletto, "Come! come! come!" and I would wrap them in the 
folds of our starry flag, and in the presence of God and my country 
I would say, "Here is our Constitution, as it was, as it is, as it ever 
shall be." 



COURTESY OVER-MUCH. 



(A typical controversy between Hon. Roscoe Conkling of New 
York, Hon. Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, and Hon. Frederick 
T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, in the United States Senate, De- 
cember i8th, 1871.) 

Mr. Frelinghuysen: Mr. President 

Mr. Conkling: Before the honorable Senator from New Jersey 
proceeds will he allow me one moment? I wish the floor for a 
moment. 




ROSCOE CONKLING. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 179 

Mr. Frelinghuysen: Very well. 

Mr. Conkling: I do not seek the floor in order to oppose the 
only proposition which I understand to be incorporated in the 
speech of the Senator from Delaware; on the contrary, I shall be 
glad to vote to give the minority in this Chamber, the Democrats 
here, another member of this committee, and be glad to vote also 
that the selection be left to themselves. I seek the floor because 
the Senator from Delaware, as I understood him, demanded of 
me specifically to know whether he was or was not right in the 
allegation he made touching a recent State convention held in the 
State of New York. 

Mr. Bayard: No; my remark was directed to the senior Sena- 
tor from New York. 

Mr. Conkling: Then the Senator does not wish to know from 
me how the fact was? 

Mr. Bayard: I have no objection to the Senator making the 
statement, as he seems anxious to do so, but I did address my 
remark to the senior Senator from New York. I said that prob- 
ably he may give us some little history as Lo the truth of the alle- 
gation to which I referred, whether or not the Republican State 
convention of New York was or was not controlled pretty much 
by Federal officials from the custom house at New York? 

Mr. Conkling: I heard the Senator. I see that the Senator 
is on the floor; I will yield to him if he asks me to do so. 

The Presiding Officer (Mr. Carpenter in the chair): The Sen- 
ator from Delaware seems to be still on the floor. 

Mr. Bayard: I had concluded all I wished to say. 

Mr. Conkling: I was going to yield to the Senator without his 
requesting me to do so. 

Mr. Bayard: Well. 

Mr. Conkling: I will yield to him with great pleasure if he 
wishes me to do so. 

Mr. Bayard: I do desire to apologize to the Senator and to 
the Senate if I have without due thought taken the floor during 
the time the Senator was entitled to it; but in truth I found myself 
during the debate which I had just closed so interrupted by my 



ISO ELOQrEXCE AND REPARTEE 

honorable friend from New York that it did not occur to me that 
he was standing much upon form, because he scarcely during that 
time, as I remember, would permit me to conclude my sentence; 
but I am good-natured, and therefore made no complaint. If I 
have infringed upon the forms of debate in regard to his rights, 
I sincerely apologize to him for it. 

Mr. Conkling: I did interrupt my honorable friend by his per- 
mission, because I relied, as I always safely may, upon his courtesy, 
and so he knows he may rely with equal safety upon mine. I 
wash, however, to remind him that it was hardly worth while 
for him thus to proceed to repeat over again what he had said 
before, while, he was in the act of disclaiming that he addressed 
it to me at all. I remind him, however, that he did nominate me 
as the senior Senator from New York, as it so happens that my 
term of service here has been longer than that of my colleague. 
He will forgive me, therefore, for falling into the error of sup- 
posing when he spoke of me in that way, looking toward me, 
that he meant me. He now authorizes me, if I wish to make a 
statement on this subject, to make it. I beg to say to the hon- 
orable Senator that I have no wish whatever to venture any state- 
ment in that regard. I think I understand how far out of place 
in this Chamber such topics are, and nothing would have induced 
me to respond in a matter of that sort unless I had understood that 
a direct requisition specifically and individually was made upon 
me by my honorable friend trom Delaware. I am so in the habit 
of acquiescing in everything that he proposes, and I am always ani- 
mated by so lively a disposition to oblige him, that I was willing to 
sacrifice somewhat what I conceived the proprieties of the occasion 
in order to gratify his curiosity in that regard; but as he has no 
curiosity which he wishes to be satisfied by me, although I under- 
stood him to call upon me, I am very glad indeed to take leave 
of the subject, and to restore the floor, with my thanks, to the 
honorable Senator from New Jersey. 

Mr. Bayard and Mr. Fenton: One moment. 

The Presiding Officer: Does the Senator from New Jersey 
yield to the Senator from Delaware? 



4k^ 



THOMAS F. BAYARD. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 181 

Mr. Frelinghuysen: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Bayard: It never is possible for me to associate age with 
the honorable Senator from New York. Youth and beauty are 
so entirely his that I never dreamed of applying the phrase "senior 
Senator" to him. (Laughter.), But I did turn to the gray hairs of 
his colleague, and I did consider him the senior Senator, but I 
beg pardon. 

Mr. Conkling: That is a very good saying, one of the best of 
all the good sayings of my honorable friend. (Laughter.) 

Mr. Fenton: Mr. President 

The Presiding Officer: Does the Senator from New Jersey 
yield to the Senator from New York? 

Mr. Fenton: For a moment only. 

Mr. Frelinghuysen: I only want a few minutes myself. 

Mr. Fenton: Allow me at this point 

Mr. Frelinghuysen: I am afraid it will lead to a long debate 
if you get into Syracuse. (Laughter.) 



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY^ THE FRIEND OF 
LABOR. 



HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, December 19th, 1871.) 

********* 

Now, it has pleased gentlemen on the other side of the House 
this morning to charge the Republican party with the passage of 
laws calculated to infringe upon the rights of labor. And I lis- 
tened to the views of the gentleman from New York (Mr. Wood), 
who v/as last upon the floor, when he charged the Republican 



182 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

party with bringing upon the country all the difficulties and all 
the wrongs to which he alluded. Sir, the Republican party has 
always supported the interests of the laboring classes, while on 
the other hand I point the gentleman to the fact that the Demo- 
cratic- party fostered slavery in this country; that it declared that 
in all the free territory of the nation slavery existed by force of 
the Constitution of the United Stat^. I point to the fact that 
it fostered slavery and encouraged it in the Staes where it existed, 
and that it repealed the Missouri compromise for the purpose of 
carrying slavery into free territory. On the other hand, I point 
him to the fact that the Republican party has made free every 
human being within the length and breadth of our country; that 
it has not only made them free, but that it has given to every man 
in this country the ballot by which he may protect his rights, so 
that it becomes the highest interest of the people of this country 
to see that the masses of the people who possess these rights are 
educated and in every way protected. I point him to the further 
fact that the Republican party has given to the country the home- 
stead law instead of giving slavery to the Territories. It has 
opened up the whole wide field of the West to the homestead 
settler, where every poor man in the country may go with his 
family and take up one hundred and sixty acres of public lands, 
and where he may live securely protected by the laws of his 
country. 

This is my answer to the gentleman, and I say, in conclusion, 
that it does not become the Democratic party, it does not become 
gentle.men upon the other side of the House, to say that the 
Republican party has been opposed to the interests of labor in 
this country. I affirm that the Republican party has been from its 
commencement until now, and will continue to be, the friend of 
the laboring masses of our country. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 183 



THE FRIEND OF THE OPPRESSED. 



HON. CHARLES SUMNER, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



(Extract from remarks in the United States Senate, December 
20th, 1871.) 

And here, again, I wish it understood that there is no question 
of social life. How often have we had that introduced into this 
Chamber? In old days, when slavery was arraigned, the constant 
inquiry of those who represented slavery was, ''Are you willing to 
associate with the colored persons; will you take these slaves, as 
your equals, into your families?" Why, sir, was there ever a more 
illogical inquiry? What has that to do with the question? A ques- 
tion of rights cannot be encountered by any social question. I may 
have whom I please as my friend, as my acquaintance, as my asso- 
ciate, and so may the Senator; but I cannot deny any human being, 
the humblest, any right of equality. He must be equal before the 
law or the promises of the Declaration of Independence are not yet 
fumiled. 

And now, sir, I pledge myself, as long as my strength remains 
in me, to press this question to a successful end. I will not see the 
colored race of this country treated with indignity on the grounds 
assigned by the Senator from Georgia. I am their defender. The 
Senator may deride me, and may represent me as giving too much 
time to what he calls a very small question. Sir, no question of 
human rights is small. Every question by which the equal rights 
of all are affected is transcendent. It cannot be magnified. But 
here are the rights of a whole race, not merely the rights of an 
individual, not merely the rights of two or three or four, but the 
rights of a whole race,, recognized as citizens, voting, helping to 
place the Senator here in this Chamber, and he turns upon them 
and denies them. 



184 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 



AMNESTY AS A MATTER OF GRACE. 



HON. HENRY WILSON, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



(Remarks in the United States Senate, December 20th, 1871.) 
Mr. President, I shall vote for this bill; not as a measure of 
justice to the South or or equality among citizens. I vote for it as 
a safe and sound measure of public policy, as a thing of charity and 
mercy, of unmerited grace. In passing this bill the less we say 
about justice or equality the better. Whatever may have been the 
wisdom of this provision of the Constitution imposing disabilities, 
neither justice nor equality were violated. Those disabilities were, 
indeed, a very — yes, sir, very light punishment to inflict by the 
country upon those who sought through the fire and blood of 
civil war to blot the Republic from the list of nations. That crime 
and the motive for that crime would never be expiated by the simple 
prohibition for a few years of the right of a few guilty leaders of 
rebellion to hold office. Sir, when we think of justice to the actors 
in that dreadful crime, dungeons open their doors and scaffolds rise 
up before us. Do not, sir, place this act of kindness, charity, and 
mercy upon that justice which would have doomed these men to a 
swift and sure punishment for their sin against man and their crime 
against their country. I say this not in hatred of the South or the 
people of the South. No, sir, no. I never hated the South nor its 
people, not even when they were drenching the land with blood 
to keep manacles forever upon human limbs. I hate no one. South 
or North, neither man nor woman; but the criminality of the re- 
bellion increases every day, and will continue to increase as time 
shall more and more distinctly reveal to the eyes of humanity the 
wickedness of its motives and purposes. 

But the war ended six years ago. Its wicked cause has utterly 
perished. The nation lives in vigor and power. It can afford not 
to execute justice, and to forgive the vanquished. It can with 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 185 

safety be magnanimous. It is sound policy to be forgiving and on- 
erous and merciful now. So feeling and so believing, I shall vote 
for this measure. I am not among those who believe that these 
restrictions have anything to do with the Ku Klux organization. 
These organizations grew out of the great crime of slavery, that 
poisoned the very bone and marrow of our people. That poison is 
not quite out of our system yet, either in the North or in the South; 
but it is wearing away. Time, the providence of God, the growth 
of free liberal ideas, and Christianity, will wear it out in the end;, 
but it will take two or three generations before we see the last of it. 



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY THE ENEMY OF 
LABOR. 



HON. LEWIS D. CAMPBELL, OF OHIO. 



(Extract from an addi^ss delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, December 20th, 1871.) 

* iff ■ y^: ;|c ^ ^ ^ ^ 5|c 

Gentlemen on the other side have told us, the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Farnsworth) yesterday stated that the Republican party 
had by its legislation shown itself to be the true friend of the work- 
iijgiiicn. Now, sir, I say it in no vindictive spirit, "more in sorrow 
than in anger," because I cherish very fond recollections of it, hav- 
ing been myself identified with that Republican party in its purer 
and better days, and shall be prepared to maintain the declaration 
when these questions are more legitimately before us for discussion, 
that no party has ever existed whose legislation has been charac- 
terized by more of oppression and wrong to the great laboring and 
producing classes of the country than the Republican party for the 
last ten years. Go back, if you please, and take a mere hasty retro- 
spective glance at what has been done. Little more than ten years 



18G ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

ago the rebellion broke out. And who, I ask, was it that fought 
down that rebellion? The great laboring and producing classes of 
society. 

When Mr. Lincoln issued his first proclamation for seventy-five 
thousand men the mechanic left his workshop, the farmer his plow, 
the day-laborer his avocation, and rallied under the flag of beauty 
and glory which now so gracefully adorns your chair, Mr. Speaker, 
and marched forward to battle and death in order that the Republic 
might live. Gentlemen may say capital went too. Yes, but when 
capital went it went on horseback with its eagles and its stars on its 
shoulders, while labor went on foot, marching through the mud 
and through the storm, standing in the trenches, charging on the 
line of the enemy, mounting his breastworks, and laying down its 
life at the cannon's mouth. Mr. Speaker, after they had thus gone 
forth under contract in 1861, that they should have thirteen dollars 
in gold a month for thus fighting, bleeding, and dying. Congress 
passed two bills in February, 1862. They were twins in birth. 
They came into life hand in hand. The one was the act authorizing 
the five-twenty bonds, and the other the legal-tender act. And the 
soldier who had gone forth under a contract to be paid in gold, 
after he was in the field, when he fought and when he bled, was 
paid off, not in gold, but in greenbacks, when it took three dollars, 
or at least two dollars and a half of legal tender to purchase for the 
support of his wife and child at home what, if you had carried out 
your contract, they would have bought for one dollar. As to the 
act authorizing the five-twenty bonds, without going into the details 
of what then occurred on this floor, I will say that, on the authority 
of the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means at that time, 
the principal of those bonds was to be paid in greenbacks. Now, 
I say, Mr. Speaker, that the Secretary of the Treasury, from the 
statement before me, has already paid over and above the principal, 
in currency, the sum of $1,536,000 over and above what, by the 
terms of the original contract, were to have been paid. 
********* 

Now, by your tariff system you tax oppressively the working- 
man from his cradle to the grave onerously and unjustly. A boy 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 187 

baby if born to-night, the laboring man is blessed with an increase 
of family; the moment it breathes the breath of life it begins to pay 
a tax upon the little flannel shirt that is put upon him. Then, as he 
grows up to be a little boy running around his father's house, and 
receives a holiday present at Christmas of his little red-top boots 
(and that is an epoch in the life of every little boy), as he struts 
about in the snow and asks his father to admire his boots, that 
father knows that he has had to pay a heavy duty upon them. If, 
when he arrives at manhood, he decides to become a mechanic, 
you tax every edged tool that he uses. If he becomes a farmer, be- 
longs to that noble class that is the source of all the wealth of this 
country, then you tax him upon the leather, the iron, the steel that 
he uses, upon the salt and everything else that he consumes. That 
is all done for the benefit of capital. Then, as he grows in years, 
and arrives at the ripe good old age of three score and ten, and 
tottering along at last tumbles into his grave, you impose a tax 
upon his estate for the screws that are used in his cofifin. And 
when his friends are gathered around his grave, and they come to 
perform the last office for him in making the little hillock of brown 
earth that shall mark the' resting-place where his mortal remains 
are to repose until the morning of the resurrection, you tax the 
estate for the Ames' shovel that is used for that purpose. 

Sir, there was a little procession on last Saturday in the streets 
of New^ York city that meant business. They have not their agents 
here to press their claims upon the consideration of the House, as 
the capitalists have. They are coming; the clans are gathering; 
the reveille will be beaten again; and from the mountain top the 
call to the charge will soon be sounded. The struggle of 1872 
between the interests of labor and the oppressive demands of cap- 
ital will be the most remarkable ever known in the history of this 
country. The clans are gathering. They will come from the moun- 
tain-top and from the valley, from the work-shop, from the plain, 
from the far-ofif frontier, from the sea, from the river, from the 
lakes, in one common union against these wrongs that have been 
inflicted upon them. They will come, sir, with no new banner, 



ISS ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

but under the good old "stars and stripes," under which they have 
fought and under which their fathers before fought. They will 
rally to the rescue; and they will have inscribed upon their banners, 
in letters of living light, "The equality of man before the law" — 
that heaven-born principle which, in my judgment, should guide 
our legislation. They will not come as they did in 1861, with 
cannon and shot and shell, to desolate the land. They will not 
come to make your mountain streams and your rivers run red 
with American blood, shed by American hands. No, no; they will 
come armed with 

"A weapon firmer set 

And surer than the bayonet; 
The ballot that falls as still 

As a snow flake on the frozen sod, 
But executes a freeman's will 

As lightning does the will of God." 
Mr. Speaker, in this struggle I do not know where the Demo- 
cratic party will stand, or how many of the Republican party nvill 
unite in this great movement. For my own part, by every instinct 
of my nature, by every fond memory of poverty-stricken parents 
who cared for me as a child upon the frontier of the West, by all 
that I have learned in later life, I expect to be a private in the ranks 
of that mighty phalanx that shall come up and exact equal justice. 



LABOR IN AMERICA NOT OPPRESSED. 



HON. JOHN A. BINGHAM, OF OHIO. 



(Extract from an address in the House of Representatives, De- 
cember 20th, 1871.) 

Sir, it is pitiful to hear gentlemen talk of labor in America being 
oppressed. The millions, sir, who swept away our forests and let 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 189 

in the sun upon the fertile earth from sea to sea, across this con- 
tinent; who have hewed from the forest and the rock the material 
and built the habitations of the nation; who feed and clothe and 
shelter the_ whole living population of America, will laugh to scorn 
the utterances of any man on this floor, or elsewhere, who talks 
about the laboring masses of America being oppressed by American 
legislation! Sir, they are the architects of their own fortunes, the 
protectors of their own rights, the promoters of their own interests, 
and the makers of their own laws. They built our fabric of civil 
government. They enacted in the first session of the First Congress 
under the Constitution of the United States an act which ordained 
the total exclusion of the law of primogeniture throughout the 
public domain. They had the wisdom by this legislation in the 
First Congress under the Constitution, represented by men who 
understood their wishes and had respect for their wants, to improve 
upon the old-time system of England by which the whole territory 
of the realm within the limits of Great Britain, under the direct 
operation of law known as primogeniture, has been put in the hands 
of the few to the exclusion of the many. Looking to their own 
interests, they took care in that early legislation to abolish that law 
of primogeniture, which sooner or later England must abolish, or 
primogeniture will abolish England, with its throne and scepter. 
Let those gentlemen who talk thus of the American laborer learn 
a lesson from this first legislation of Congress, which declared that 
England's law of primogeniture was forever excluded from the 
public domain of the United States, and in its stead provided the 
wise and comprehensive provision that throughout the public do- 
main, when any person should die intestate seized of lands therein, 
the same should descend, share and share alike, to the children of 
his house, or his next of kin of equal blood. There stands the 
answer of America in one of her first acts of legislation to this 
babble about not caring for or looking after the interests of labor. 

Gentlemen also talk here of the tariff. Everybody knows that 
th'e need of just such tariff regulation in the interests of labor was 
one of the immediate producing causes of our national Revolution. 
The gentleman, my colleague (Mr. Campbell), talks about the tax 



190 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

on the nail in his coffin. But for the result of our Revolution and 
legislation the gentleman would not have been permitted to have 
a nail for his coffin unless he carried it three thousand miles across 
the sea and paid tribute upon it to a foreign country. The people 
having achieved their independence, very wisely proceeded in the 
First Congress, as we have seen, to legislate not only for their own 
interests in the public lands, and for their equal distribution as far 
as possible, but to legislate in the interests of labor by declaring 
that it was needful for the protection as well as for the development 
of American industry to impose duties upon foreign imports. 

Sir, facts like these constitute the logic of the argument in the 
discussion of American affairs. Let the inquiry go on. When 
the commission comes to inquire as to the relations of labor in this 
country, let the answer go out to all the listening nations of the 
Old World, that the relations of labor in America are simply these: 
that labor is America, that America is a nation of laborers; and 
let them, in the light of that utterance, understand the significance 
of the words in the text of our Constitution, that "neither the 
United States, nor any State of this Union, shall grant any title of 
nobility." Let them understand in the light of the facts touching 
labor in this country, that the only nobility tolerated or recognized 
in America under American law is that nobility which springs from 
the honest toil of brain, or heart, or hand. Let it be understood 
all over the world that the only nobleman to be recognized in 
America under American law is the man who finds out and faith- 
fully performs his duty to himself, his country, and his race; who 
by his honest toil, if you please, makes a blade of grass grow 
where none grew before. Let it be understood that the great body 
of our people are of the nobility born of honest toil; that they are 
the men who cover your plains year by year with fields of golden 
grain, who clothe your mountains to their very summits with the 
purple vine; that they are the men who unearth the immense min- 
eral masses imbedded in your mountains, and, amid the darkness 
that broods over the blast of the furnace and the rolling of the 
wheel, mold them by the good hands of their genius into forms of 
strength, and use, and beauty. Let the investigation go on, and 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 191 

reveal to the world the fact that the only condition possible to 
America in consonance with the Constitution of the United States 
is that just condition of things which assures the development of 
individual and collective man — the citizen and the State — and pro- 
duces diversified labor with fair and just rewards. 

Finally, sir, let it be understood that America, having broken 
every unjust fetter, imposed not by virtue of the national law, but 
by virtue of local State laws, has at last crowned the Republic with 
the greatness of justice in this, that it has secured by the combined 
power of all to the humblest citizen in the land all his rights of 
property and of person, including his right to work and his right 
to enjoy the fruits of his toil. An American citizen, proud of my 
country and its laws, I challenge and demand investigation. 

As to what has been said here so hurriedly in the heat and ex- 
citement of debate about the enormous revenues collected from 
customs and by means of internal taxation, it is sufficient to say 
that they are a part of the price paid by our law-abiding people for 
the life of the Republic. There is no man in the nation, to whatever 
party he belongs, who, if he has a head to comprehend the great 
mission of America, murmurs on account of all the sacrifice and 
all the suffering that have fallen upon this people within the last 
ten years, in presence of the fact that for the sacrifice 'and the 
suffering he has a country redeemed, regenerated and made im- 
mortal among the nations by the virtue and the valor of her people. 
Let the investigation go on. 



WHAT IS TREASON? 



HON. FRANCIS P. BLAIR, JR., OF MISSOURI. 



(Address in the United States Senate, December 21st, 1871.) 
Mr. Speaker, the subject I have selected for a few remarks this 
morning is that of general amnesty. It is a subject which has 



192 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

created no little excitement and interest in the West, as well as in 
other portions of the United States; and I presume that there is 
no subject to-day in this country which is attracting so much atten- 
tion as that of "universal amnesty." I am sure that there is no 
subject that could arouse the sympathies in my own breast more 
than that which looks to the amelioration of the suffering condition 
of my own race, I am one of those, if you please, who long since 
hoisted and marched under the banner that floats to the breeze 
"the equality of all men before the law." I have rallied under that 
banner in years past, and I expect to do so as long as there is a 
human being in this land who is deprived of equal rights and 
privileges under the law. I shall continue to rally under it, and 
my voice shall ever be heard in behalf of the equality of those 
who are deprived to-day of the privileges of American freemen. 
We hoisted the banner with this republican motto, and labored 
for the liberation of those who are not of our own race or com- 
plexion; and we brought about results which partially crowned 
with victory all our labors in the campaigns of the past, when 
we gave not only physical, but political, freedom to the black men 
of the country. 

I am one of those, Mr. Speaker, who do not propose to stop at 
this point. I am one of those who intend to keep the ball rolling 
as long as one of my race in this Government is deprived of the 
liberties and privileges granted to the black man. I am one of 
those who to-day think that the friends of the white men of this 
country, who are now deprived of the blessings of this Republic, 
have the right to be heard on this floor, and throughout the length 
and breadth of this land. I am not unmindful of the fact that the 
cries of that class of people have come to the Congress of the 
United States time and again in vain. I am not unmindful of the 
fact that there are men, white men, who are to-day deprived of those 
blessings which gentlemen so, flippantly speak of in this House as 
belonging to "all men before the law." 

Mr. Speaker, in unfurling the banner and striking for "the 
equality of all men before the law" I do not mean to leave my own 
race degraded as they are to-day in a portion of the States in this 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 193 



# 



Union. If that is not Republicanism, then I am not a Republican, 
either in a partisan or in a general sense; but if it is Republicanism, 
then I want the Republican party of this nation to come up to the 
work. Let them in this House and in the Senate say to the people 
of the United States that they will be true to their principles, and 
that the white men of this country shall be free men again, and be 
invested with all the rights and privileges the Constitution gives to 
American citizens. 

But, Mr. Speaker, I am told these men committed a great crime; 
that they are unworthy of confidence, and beneath the notice of the 
American people; and that such unmistakably is the doctrine held 
by the Republican party of this Union. What crime, Mr. Speaker, 
have they been guilty of? Is the crime committed by them in 1861 
in rebelling against this Government any greater than our fore- 
fathers committed in raising the standard of revolution against the 
mother country, England? Is treason by American citizens against 
the American Government a greater crime than treason by British 
citizens against the British Government? The people of the South- 
ern States to-day are guilty of no greater crime, legally considered, 
than that of which our forefathers were guilty when they rebelled 
against the government of England. And the question with me — 
when we look back over that period and read the history of our 
country with so much interest, and with our bosoms heaving with 
sympathy for those of our people who were engaged in that great 
revolution — is why we to-day have such feelings toward our own 
brethren when they, like our forefathers, simply raised their arms to 
strike down a Government which they thought failed to protect 
them? I say, why is this? Both were alike guilty of treason under 
the law. Is it because they have been guilty of a moral crime; or 
is it because they have been guilty of a legal crime; or is it because 
they have been guilty of both? 

Does treason necessarily involve moral turpitude? I hold that 
it does not. Moral ofifenses are well defined. Legal offenses and 
crimes are also well defined. But I have yet to learn that, because 
an ofifense is such as we term a legal offense, it necessarily follows 



194 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTE^E 

that thereby it becomes a moral offense. Were the leaders of re- 
bellion against the Government of the United States guilty of a 
moral offense? We do not arraign, try, or condemn them for such. 
If they were guilty of a moral crime, they will have to answer for 
that to a higher tribunal than we have here on this earth. If they 
were guilty of a legal crime that crime has since been blotted out 
by executive clemency. They stand before this Government to-day 
without offense, so far as participation in rebellion is concerned; 
they stand as citizens of this great country; they stand as freemen, 
and as such they should be recognized and regarded in the councils 
of our nation. 

If it be held that treason is necessarily a moral crime, then it 
necessarily follows that our forefathers were guilty of a moral crime 
in rebelling against England, and that every attempted revolution by 
any people against any established Government is a moral crime. 
I presume, however, that it will not be contended that rebellion 
necessarily is a moral crime, but that it is simply a legal offense 
against the Government. I think we should take all their surround- 
ings into view and see whether or not they deserve at our hands 
such treatment as they are to-day receiving from this Government. 
I am not here to apologize for their treason. Had the Government 
seen fit to enforce the penalty of the law, it would have been a re- 
sponsibility resting upon the Government itself. It had been the 
right to punish for treason against the Government and against 
its laws. But it did not see cause to do it; and now having passed 
by the crime of treason, having blotted it out, we still withhold from 
a portion of that people the right to appear on this floor and to 
hold office in this Government or under the State Governments. 

Self-interest prompts man to do a great many things that he 
would not otherwise do. And in this view of the case I look at this 
rebellion probably in a different light from that in which a great 
many others would view it. I look on that people as going into the 
rebellion to protect themselves as they believed against the aggres- 
sions of a party that had risen to power in i860. I look upon them, 
in other words, as going into rebellion to secure to themselves their 
property that they then held under the laws of the States in which 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 195 

they lived. It was then a question of property, a question of dollars 
and cents, a question of interest (that prompts all of us to act) that 
prompted that people in 1861 to take up arms against this Govern- 
ment. They owned slaves; these slaves were v/orth millions of 
dollars. And not only did they own them, but they or their an- 
cestors had purchased them, or a great portion of them, from men 
living in the northern States. In other words, the men who cried 
out against slavery, who waged a war against slavery the strongest, 
owed their position in society to the fact that they had then and 
there in their pockets the proceeds of slaves sold to that same people 
who rebelled against the Government of the United States. If not, 
we know that their ancestors did have. 

Now, then, that being the case, it does look to me, Mr. Speaker, 
that it should induce us at least to look with some degree of liber- 
ality upon the offense that they committed in 1861 against the Gov- 
ernment. If they honestly believed that their rights were jeopar- 
dized, if they honestly believed that the party in power were the 
enemies of their interests, and that their slave property was in 
danger, they did nothing more than all other people who rebel 
against their Government do w^hen they rebel, because they believe 
their interests are in danger. I cannot conceive, then, how it is 
that we can expect that people ever to view the rebellion in any 
other light than as being right in its incipiency and through all its 
stages. If they believed that slavery was no moral crime in itself, 
if they believed that the institution of slavery was compatible with 
divine daw as well as with the political laws of the land, if they 
believed it was no offense against God or man to hold slaves, and 
if they believed honestly that their slave property was in danger, 
I say that their consciences can never be brought to the point 
where they can say they did wrong in waging rebellion against the 
United States Government. 

I make these remarks rather in reply to those which are fre- 
quently made that the southern people should come back to the 
Government and kneel down, as it were, at our feet and ask forgive- 
ness for the wrong that they have done. That, sir, involves the 
very question of their honest purpose and intention at the beginning 



lOG ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

of the rebellion. If they believe that they were right, they will never 
come back and say that they committed a wrong in going into re- 
bellion against the Government. The men who went into the re- 
bellion and the men who prosecuted it with arms against the Gov- 
ernment, believing that they were right, were just as honest in their 
purposes and intentions, and their consciences just as free from 
wrong and crime, as the consciences of those who enlisted under 
the banner of the Union believing they were right and waged the 
war to suppress the rebellion. Until the mind is convicted of 
wrong the conscience cannot have any reflection with reference to 
that which is held to be wrong by others. People must be taught 
to know what wrong is before they can feel ^ny compunctions of 
conscience. The man who feels that slavery was right can never 
have any such compunctions with reference to the institution of 
slavery. Was slavery, then, right? 

This question can only be of importance to those who believe 
slavery wrong in the abstract and without divine sanction or recog- 
nition. For the consideration of all such I submit the following 
from the Bible: 

When Lot, Abraham's brother, was captured at the battle of 
the Kings, in the valley of Siddim, it is said: 

"And when Abraham heard that his brother was taken captive, 
he armed his trained servants," born in his own house, three hun- 
dred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan." — Genesis, chap- 
ter 14, verse 14. 

Again when Sarah had dealt harshly with Hagar, her servant, 
and Hagar had left, it is said that an angel of the Lord appeared 
and said unto her: 

"Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands." — 
Genesis, chapter 16, verse 9. 

Again, we have the following as a law given to the Israelites: 

"Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, 
shall be of the heathen that are round about you, of them shall ye 
buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the 
strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of 
their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 197 

they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an in- 
heritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a posses- 
sion; they shall be your bondmen forever." — Leviticus, chapter 25, 
verses 44, 45 and 46. 

And upon this subject we further find that not only strangers 
could be bought and made slaves of, under what we call the Jewish 
economy, but the Israelites themselves could be sold into slavery, 
and when thus sold they were compelled to serve until the jubile* 
next succeeding their enslavement; and even then, in certain cases, 
if they did not wish to leave their masters, holes were bored through 
their ears and they were made slaves forever. (Exodus, chapter 
26, verses 1-6.) 

In addition to that, we find in the New Testament Scriptures 
many injunctions to servants to obey their masters and to masters 
to be kind to their servants. And we have a notable instance in the 
case of Paul returning Onesiums. an escaped slave, to his master 
again. (Epistle of Paul to Philemon.) 

Now, if there is one fact clear to mind, it is that the Scriptures 
recognize the institution of slavery. And the only difference be- 
tween myself and many of those who are advocates of the institu- 
tion is, that I never have believed, I do not believe now, and I 
never expect to believe, that the slavery of the Bible is confined 
to any particular race, black or white; I believe it is general; and 
the idea that the black people of this country were slaves because 
of a curse pronounced upon their forefathers, I never could tol- 
erate. Now, while that is true, it is nevertheless the fact that the 
Old and New Testament Scriptures do recognize the institution 
of slavery. 

Then, not only did the southern people have the custom of 
their forefathers, not only did they have the fact that every State 
in this Union at one time, save one, tolerated slavery before them, 
but they had the sanction of divine Writ for the institution they 
then held and had in their midst. 

Now, I hold that slavery, having the sanction not only of 
divine but of political law. it was a question with that people to 
determine whether their rights were jeopardized; and relying upon 



108 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

the great law of self-defense and the right of revolution that all 
people adhere to, it was for them to determine when they should 
exercise it. This they did, honestly, as I believe; but, as I also 
believe, without just cause. Their bravery, and the sacrifices they 
made, attest their honesty and sincerity. Should not these facts 
mitigate their offense and soften our feelings toward them? 

It is said by some that they cannot sit in the councils of the 
nation with such great rebels and traitors as Jefferson Davis, 
Breckinridge, Toombs, and others. I cannot see upon what this 
is founded. It looks to me more like a matter of prejudice and 
passion than anything else. I cannot see how we can make a law 
admitting into this House those "who have been guilty of treason 
against the Government, and refuse admittance to Jeft'erson Davis, 
Breckinridge, Toombs, and others. I cannot see by what process 
of reasoning or logic such a conclusion can be reached, or upon 
what it is based. If one is guilty of treason so are the others, and 
yet such men are admitted to this floor by the dozen. This shows 
that it cannot be a question of principle, but of prejudice, that 
prompts to such a course. 

I well remember the great respect and regard entertained for 
Robert E. Lee at the close of the rebellion by the Union element 
of the country, and even by the soldiers who had fought under the 
Union flag. I well know how, even to this day, they as it were 
cherish the memory of Stonewall Jackson. Yet, while Robert E. 
Lee, with his artillery and machinery of war, destroyed the lives 
of hundreds and thousands of our Union soldiers, Jefferson Davis 
was sitting as a civil officer at the head of his Government, and 
never, perhaps, destroyed the life of one. So with Stonewall Jack- 
son — a man with whom the soldiers and officers of our Army would 
rather have met than any other. Yet these men can be respected 
and appreciated, while Davis, Breckinridge, Toombs, and others 
are derided and denounced because they happened to hold civil 
positions in the rebel government. 

Who was more dangerous to the rebellion, Lincoln as civil 
magistrate, or Grant as the commander of the Union Army? 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 199 

If we look at the enormity of the crime, if we look at the offense 
that was committed, if we look at the injury done to our people 
and our own Government, if we look at the great expense entailed 
upon our government and the destruction to our soldiery by Robert 
E. Lee and those who fought under him, it appears to me his 
crime as compared with that of Jefferson Davis, Breckinridge, and 
Toombs is as a mountain to a mole hill. Yet those who were in 
arms against the Government and doing us the greatest injury, we 
can take to our embrace and surround with our sympathies, while 
we repulse and drive from our presence those who were the civil 
functionaries of the confederate government. I cannot see any 
reason for this distinction and discrimination; and it is to be 
hoped that parties here will unite before the close of the session 
and pass a bill wiping out all distinction on account of the rebel- 
lion, and making "all men equal before the law." Then, Mr. 
Speaker, we shall have a republican Government in form, and the 
grand mission of those who have enlisted under the banner of 
"freedom and the equality of all men before the law" will have 
been consummated. 



RHODE ISLAND'S GIFT TO THE NATION. 



HON. WILLIAM SPRAGUE, OF RHODE ISLAND. 



(Address delivered January 9th, 1872, on the occasion of the 
presentation of a memorial statue of Roger Williams, by the State 
of Rhode Island to the people of the United States.) 

Mr. President, I formally present, in the name and in behalf of 
the State of Rhode Island, a memorial statue of its founder, to 
the people of the United States, to be preserved in the national 
Capitol with the statues of those worthies whose services and 
merits, in the judgment of their grateful descendants, entitle them 
to this pre-eminent honor. 



">00 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

It is less to be regretted than the artist who has created so strik- 
ing an ideal conception of Roger Williams had no authentic source 
from which he could produce the likeness of the man, since the 
name of Roger Williams is rather identified with the living ideas 
of which he was the exponent, than with any mere individualities of 
form and feature. 

Two centuries and a half have almost elapsed since the General 
Court of the Plymouth Colony expressed the intolerant bigotry of 
a political clergy by pronouncing sentence of banishment upon 
Roger Williams. His chief offense was a denial that the civil 
power extended to matters of faith and conscience; and for this he 
was driven beyond the pale of what was then, in New England, the 
abode of religion and civilization. 

After experiencing the privations of a bitter winter in a wilder- 
ness among the savages he landed, after a second warning from 
his persecutors, with a handful of devoted friends, upon the western 
shore of the Seekouk in the early summer of 1636. From this be- 
ginning sprang the now proud and prosperous city of Providence. 

But it is not because he was the founder of a city, nor because 
he planted a colony, from the loins of which has sprung a vigorous 
State, that Rhode Island has resolved to set up his statue in the 
Capitol of the nation; but she has accorded him this honor because 
he successfully vindicated the right of private judgment in matters 
of conscience, and effected a moral and political revolution in all 
the Governments of the civilized world. 

The doctrine of absolute separation between Church and State 
is so universally recognized by the men of this generation, as a 
cardinal necessity to the existence of a free and healthy Govern- 
ment, and appears to us to be such an evident political axiom, 
.hat it requires an effort to suppose that it was not a principle of 
political philosophy from the earliest settlement of this country. 
It was not so. The Puritans of New England were willing to suffer 
to the last extremity for conscience sake, but they were in no sense 
martyrs to liberty of conscience, and were as intolerant of heresy 
■:o their belief as the Conformists of England, or the Church of 
Rome. The Puritans brought with them the best results of the 



IX TPIE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 201 

Reformation which had agitated Europe from the time of Wickliffe 
to Luther, but as a body they had no conception of the idea that in 
matters of faith the conscience of the man, and not the law of the 
State, was supreme. The merit of Williams in announcing and 
maintaining this then strange and heretical doctrine is therefore to 
be estimated with reference to the adverse tendencies and opinions 
of the period. He alone brought the great work of the Reforma- 
tion to its last grand stage of development. 

It is a mistaken idea that violent revolutions are the only crises 
which determine the fortunes of the people. There are other in- 
fluences less startling but not less important, more gradual in their 
culmination, but not less certain, which modify and shape by their 
silent but ceaseless power the destiny not merely of a single people, 
but of a whole race. When we contemplate, as with just pride we 
may, the boundless resources of our common country, and realize 
that with each succeeding year we are giving strength and per- 
manency to that lively experiment in self-government which for 
less than a century has been nursed on this continent, we may 
well gratefully inquire how much of this great progress and 
political triumph is due to the spread and adoption of that idea, 
which, in weakness and in discouragement, was first resolutely ex- 
hibited in a scheme of government by a single master-spirit, in 
1636, on the hills of Providence. 

It was a happy thought, which suggested that the several States" 
should contribute to form a national gallery of the statues of the 
men who have been most prominent in their history. Rhode 
Island would have been untrue to her antecedents, had she failed 
to name her first citizen for this dignity. She presents, in prompt 
response to the opportunity, this memorial in marble, for the con- 
templation of those who resort hither to witness the best develop- 
ment of a republican Government, and in grateful acknowledgment 
of the services which, not to her alone, but to the whole world»^ 
have been rendered by Roger Williams. 



202 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 



THE PANTHEON OF AMERICA. 



HON. HENRY B. ANTHONY, OF RHODE ISLAND. 



(A portion of an address made in the United States Senate, 
January 9th, 1872, on the occasion of the presentation of the statue 
of Roger Williams by the State of Rhode Island to the people of 
the United States.) 

Mr. President, I had not intended to interpose any remarks, at 
this time; for although it is always an easy and a pleasant duty 
for a Rhode Island man to discuss the character, to recount the 
history, and to celebrate the praises of the great Founder of our 
State, I have received no intimation, from those who had charge 
of the subject at home, that anything from me was expected or 
desired. And yet, sir, it is hardly possible for a Rhode Island 
Senator to remain entirely silent, when, in this high presence, the 
theme is Roger Williams; and I am sure you will not deem it an 
intrusion or an invasion of the province of my colleague, to whose 
abler hands this matter has been committed and who has so well 
performed the duty assigned to him, if I detain you, very briefly, 
before the question is put. 

My colleague has well said that it was a happy idea to convert 
the old Hall of the House of Representatives into the Pantheon 
of America. The idea originated with my distinguished friend 
who sits upon my right (Mr. Morrill, of Vermont), then a leading 
member of the House,' as he is now of the Senate. It was indeed 
a happy idea to assemble in the Capitol the silent effigies of the 
men who have made the annals of the nation illustrious, that there, 
overlooking our deliberations, inspiring our counsels, and ani- 
mating us by their example, they may seem to guard the greatness 
which they founded or defended. 

And I do not deem this proceeding an idle form, but rather a 
high ceremonial of the Republic; and I anticipate, with a patriotic 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 203 

pleasure, that it will be repeated, from time to time, until every 
State shall have sent here her contribution to this assemblage of 
heroes and patriots and statesmen and orators and poets and 
scholars and divines — of men who, in every department of great- 
ness, have added lustre to the American name. And as often as 
this scene is repeated; when Virginia shall send to us the statue 
of Washington, which cannot be too often found repeated in the 
Capitol; and with it that of Thomas Jefferson or of Patrick Henry; 
when North Carolina shall send us Nathaniel Macon, and South 
Carolina shall send us Sumpter or Marion, and Georgia shall 
send us Oglethorpe; when Kentucky shall send us Daniel Boone 
and Henry Clay, and Tennessee shall send us Andrew Jackson, 
and Illinois shall send us Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Doug- 
las, and Missouri shall send Thomas H. Benton; when New York 
shall send us Peter Stuyvesant and Alexander Hamilton; when 
Connecticut shall send us Roger Sherman and Jonathan Trumbull 
— I believe they are here already; I know that the blood of both 
is represented in this Chamber by men coming from States that 
were not born wben the names which their Senators worthily beai 
were first made illustrious — when Vermont shall send us the stal- 
wart form of that hero who thundered at the gates of Ticonderoga 
"in the name of the Continental Congress and the great Jehovah"; 
when New Jersey shall send us the great grandfather of the Senator 
who sits on the opposite side of the Chamber (Mr. Stockton), and 
the uncle of the Senator who sits nearer me (Mr. Frelinghuysen); 
when Pennsylvania shall send us William Penn, and when Massa- 
chusetts, pausing in the embarrassment of her riches, looking down 
the long list of her sons who, in arms, in arts, and in letters, 
in all the departments of greatness, have contributed to her glory, 
shall, with hesitating fingers, select two to represent that glory 
here; then, and on every such occasion, I trust that the spirit of 
party will cease, that the voice of faction will be hushed, and that 
we shall give an hour to the past. We shall be the wiser and better 
for it. 



204 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 



ROGER WILLIAMS. 



HON. HENRY B. ANTHONY, OF RHODE ISLAND. 



(Portion of an address delivered in the United States Senate, 
January 9th, 1872. on the presentation of the statue of Roger 
Williams to the people of the United States by the State of Rhode 
Island.) 

In all our history no name shines with a purer light than his 
whose memorial we have lately placed in the Capitol. In the 
history of all the world there is no more striking example of a 
man grasping a grand idea, at once, in its full proportions, in all 
its completeness, and carrying it out, unflinchingly, to its utmost 
legitimate results. 

Roger Williams did not merely lay the foundation of religious 
freedom, he constructed the whole edifice, in all its impregnable 
strength, in all its imperishable beauty. Those who have followed 
him, in the same spirit, have not been able to add anything to the 
grand and simple words in which he enunciated the principle, nor 
to surpass him in the exact fidelity with which he reduced it to 
the practical business of government. 

Religious freedom, which now, by general consent, underlies 
the foundation principles of civilized government, was, at that 
time, looked upon as a wilder theory than any proposition, moral, 
political, or religious, that has since engaged the serious attention 
of mankind. It was regarded as impracticable, disorganizing, im- 
pious, and, if not utterly subversive of social order, it was not so 
only because its manifest absurdity would prevent any serious effort 
to enforce it. The lightest punishment deemed due to its confessor 
was to drive him out into the howling wilderness. Had he not 
met with more Christian treatment from the savage children of the 
forest than he had found from "the Lord's annointed," he would 
have perished in the beginning of his experiment. 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 205 

Mr. -President, fame, what we call human glory, renown, is won 
on many fields and in many varieties of human effort. Some clutch 
it, with bloody hands, amid the smoke and thunder of battle. Some 
woo it in the quiet retreats of study, till the calm seclusion is 
broken by the plaudits of the admiring millions, of every tongue 
and of every clime. Others, in contests, which, if not bloody, are 
too often bitter and vindictive, seek it in the forum, amid "the 
applause of listening senates," caught up and echoed back by the 
tumultuous cheers of popular adulation. All these enjoy, while 
they live, the renown which gilds their memories with unfadmg 
glory The fame which attends them is their present reward. It 
stimulates them to greater exertions and sustains them in higher 
flights. And it is just and right. 

But there is a fame of another kind, that comes in another way, 
that comes unsought, if it comes at all; for the first condition for 
those who achieve it is that they shall not seek it. When a man, 
in the communion of his own conscience, following the lessons of 
his own convictions, determines what it is his duty to do, and, m 
obscurity and discouragement, with no companions but difficulty 
and peril goes out to do it-when such a man establishes a great 
principle, or succeeds in achieving a great amelioration or a great 
benefit to the human race, without the expectation cr the desire of 
reward, in present honor or in future renown, the fame that shines 
a glory around his brow is a reflection from the "pure white hght 
in which the angels walk, around the throne of God. 

Such a man was Roger Williams. No thought of himself, no 
idea of the recompense or of praise interfered to sully the perfect 
purity of his motives, the perfect disinterestedness of his conduct. 
Laboring for the highest benefit of his fellow-men, he was entirely 
indifferent to their praises. He knew (for God, whose prophet he 
was, had revealed it to him) that the great principle for which he 
contended, and for which he sufifered, founded in the eterna fit- 
ness of things, would endure forever. He did not inquire if his 
name would survive a generation. In his vision of the future, he 
saw mankind emancipated from the thralldom of the priestcraft, 
from the blindness of bigotry, from the cruelties of intolerance. 



206 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

He saw the nations walk forth in the liberty wherewith Christ had 
made them free. He saw no memorial of himself, in marble or in 
bronze, or in the general admiration of mankind. More than two 
centuries have passed since he flourished; nearly two centuries have 
passed since he died, buried like Moses, for "no man knoweth of 
his sepulcher;" and now the great doctrine which he taught 
pervades the civilized world. A grateful State sends up here the 
ideal image of her Founder and her Father. An appreciative na- 
tion receives it, and, through her accredited representatives, pledges 
herself to preserve it among her most precious treasures. 



AN ELOQUENT PRAYER. 



(A prayer made in the House of Representatives, January 9th, 
1872, at the opening of the session, by Rev. Dr. De Sola, minister 
of the Portuguese Synagogue, and Professor of Oriental Literature 
in McGill University, Montreal.) 

Almighty and Everlasting God, these, Thy servants, the repre- 
sentatives of the people of the United States in Congress assembled, 
have come to legislate in accordance with the principles of civil 
and religious liberty enunciated by their sires, the founders of this 
Republic, and by perpetuating the same, to prove themselves 
worthy the glorious heritage they have received. Then look down 
from Thy holy habitation, from heaven, and assist and bless them 
at this time. Pour out Thy spirit most plenteously upon them; yea, 
let rest upon them the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the 
spirit of counsel and ability, the spirit of the knowledge of Thee, 
O Lord. Let righteousness be the girdle of their loins, and faith- 
fulness the cincture of their reins. And in all their deliberations 
for the public weal, let not personal or partisan hostility find place; 
but suffer harmony, patriotism, truth, and justice to pervade them, 
so that to bigotry there may be given no sanction, and to persecu- 
tion no assistance. Let such a spirit prevail in all they do and say 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 207 

for this, their country, and inspire them with an enlarged sentiment 
of peace and good-will toward all other peoples. 

We gratefully acknowledge, O Lord, that such a sentiment is 
signally manifesting itself in our day, and we render unto Thee 
our most hearty thanks that thou permittest us, even now, to wit- 
ness a victory of peace infinitely greater than any victory achieved 
in war, at any time , and by any people, in that this nation and its 
parent nation are settling their differences, not by might, not by 
power, but by Thy spirit, in a^^manner best becoming those of one 
origin', language and blood, by an appeal to the arbitrament of 
nations impartial and disinterested. And as aforetime and among; 
other peoples many a vindictive and bloody struggle, destroying 
both the material resources and moral strength of those engaged, 
has originated in much less important considerations, we have 
special cause to thank Thee that this evil was averted, and to ask 
that the words of the Chief Magistrate of this Republic may indeed 
be realized; that this example may be everywhere followed, so as 
to restore to the productive industry of the world millions of men 
engaged in training and preparations for war. Bless, then, both 
these nations who proclaim the glad tidings of peace to the world; 
draw them yet nearer and nearer to each other in mutual esteem 
and mutual confidence, and this not merely for their own welfare, 
but for the blessings of all the families of the earth, to whom 
they are the hope, the teachers of liberty, and enlightenment. 

Supreme Ruler of the Universe, may it please Thee to let the 
light of Thy countenance shine continuously upon this land Thou 
hast so greatly favored. Open unto it Thy goodly treasure, and 
bless it with prosperity within and tranquility without. Preserve 
it from bloodshed and from the pestilence that stalketh in dark- 
ness Maintain within it the good character of liberty Thou hast 
inspired and as he who sacrilegiously touched Thine altar of old 
was accounted worthy of death, so perish the unhallowed hand 
that would pervert or destroy this Constitution of wisdom, justice, 
and liberty, for the narrow purposes of sectarianism. And lastly, 
and above all, may its people advance most in the fear of Thee, and 



208 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

love of Thee, so that they may be for a name and praise among all 
the nations of the earth. 



THE CHARACTER OF THE PURITAN. 



HON. S. S. COX, ©F NEW YORK. 



(Remarks made in the House of Representatives, January nth, 
1872.) 

Mr. Speaker, I am reluctant to intrude upon these funereal 
ceremonies enacted two hundred years after the burial of Roger 
Williams; but, after what we have heard on matters connected 
with esthetics, history, religious toleration, and "soul liberty," I 
undertake to say that Roger Williams will never suffer by discus- 
sion in this House from the State of Massachusetts, or in this age 
of enlightenment. 

We are all, Mr. Speaker, under obligations to Roger Williams, 
though it extends back nearly two centuries. I am ashamed to 
say that the State of Rhode Island, where I was educated, has 
never yet erected a monument to his memory, or even discovered 
the place of his sepulture. It does not much matter, as his soul is 
not located. Some one has said that an apple-seed planted in the 
ground struck into his skull, and has produced fruit. It has so, 
for many generations. Under the shadow of that apple-tree, men 
can sit down as under the old vine and fig-tree of the Scriptures, 
with none to molest or make afraid, so far as God and religious 
connection are concerned. 

Mr. Speaker, Roger Williams came to Rhode Island driven 
through the woods. He landed on the rock called "What-Cheer." 
I have often stood upon that "rock." He was received by the 
Indians with kindly welcome. Hence the name of the rock. He 
was a true, good and tolerant Christian gentleman. The colony 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 209 

of Massachusetts, which cast him out, could not appreciate such 
a soul at that time; nor have they since, though Mr. Bancroft 
gives him an immortality as one of the heroes of our altar. 

Roger Williams went into the wilderness. The very savages 
received him afaer he had been exorcised, as a bad spirit, by that 
puritanical element so lauded here to-day at his expense; the same 
spirit which left England to escape sacrifice and disasters. It 
makes in true history no exhibition of the heroism of those great 
Puritans of England who, like Pym, Hampden, Vane, and Crom- 
well, did not "leave their country for their country's good." 

Nor did the Puritans come to this country, as has been said, 
to leave their mother Church of England. Without leaving their 
church at all they went to Holland. There they became so trouble- 
some and pestiferous that the Dutch shipped them to some un- 
known country. It was shrewdly suspected and is generally be- 
lieved that it was intended to land them on the island which I have 
the honor, in part, to represent; but by some dispensation of Prov- 
idence, or a trade or bribe with the skipper, they did not land there, 
but at Plymouth. 

The Puritans made a system of government which has been 
much praised. But, as I could show from history, it does not 
contain one element of democratic, religious, or civil liberty. It 
throttled Roger Williams by exiling soul liberty. This is proved 
by the elegant and truthful speech of the gentleman from Rhode 
Island. All history confirms it. My reason for voting to receive 
this statue from Rhode Island is that Roger Williams was the 
champion of that which was then too great and generous for 
Massachusetts to accept; but which the American Republic in 1787 
—aye, all nations now— including Spain and Italy, receive as the 
organic law of the relation between God and His creatures. 

In America we are not without illustrations of religious liberty. 
Lord Baltimore illustrated it in Maryland, as Roger Williams, 
almost contemporary, illustrated it in Rhode Island. But if you 
will search history for truth, you will find that these Pilgrim fathers, 
so prodigally lauded, when they were about to come to this country, 
went to King James and applied for a charter. They told him 



210 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

that they wanted to go to another land to "worship God, and — 
catch fish." (Laughter.) The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Butler), just before me; will see the propriety of keeping up that 
record. (Laughter.) King James said in reply: "Fore God. All 
right. Go and worship God and catch fish; for catching fish is 
the apostles' own calling." (Laughter.) The Puritans, therefore, 
came to this country with an eye always upward to God, and with 
an eye somewhat downward for a bite. (Laughter.) 

But, Mr. Speaker, I did not expect to participate in this debate. 
I had no right, perhaps, to enter into the discussion, excepting for 
this one reason: I belong to the little State of Rhode Island. 
Perhaps, by my size, I belong to that little State which Major Noah 
once said he could put in his breeches pocket, and which I believe 
is entitled almost to one Representative under the recent appor- 
tionment — "two," some gentleman says. I shall be satisfied with 
one — Roger Williams. But whether one or two, she is a sovereign 
State; and most sovereign in the ideas of Roger Williams. 

I have reason, sir, to love Rhode Island; I have reason to re- 
vere the memory of Roger Williams — not because he was a Baptist, 
or that I am particularly fond of water. (Laughter.) I am espe- 
cially a friend of Rhode Island because, as a boy, I was drawn 
thither to her splendid and liberal college. Brown University, and 
to the grand presence of Roger Williams, Dr. Wyland. He was 
the demi-god of our era. Under his tuition I spent the happiest 
of my days. The chief delight of my life is that I was educated 
by his great and generous soul; and in a college, the first clause 
in the charter of which was that there should be perfect religious 
liberty to Protestant and Catholic, to Jew and Gentile, to paynim 
and infidel — all alike. 

This is the 'distinguishing characteristic of Rhode Island. The 
principle of religious liberty, or as Roger Williams himself called 
it, of "soul liberty," is illustrated in the charter of the college of 
Rhode Island. In Massachusetts they made their laws to conform 
to the law of God; but the Puritan people and the Puritan Church 
were the Aarons always to interpret those laws. Like the Ulemats 
of the Turkish constitution, if called upon by the Sultan to interpret 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 211 

the constitution; if they did not interpret the constitution according 
to the idea of the Sultan, they were to be pounded to death in a 
mortar. (Laughter.) 

The Puritan adopted a similar mode. I am sure there has been 
improvement in recent times. There has been great advance in 
Massachusetts since Roger Williams went into the wilderness. I 
have seen the day, and I am not old, when a Baptist, an Episco- 
palian, a Separatist, Quaker, or a Dissenter, would have stood in 
fear of being hanged, if not in Washington, on Boston Common 
(laughter); but I do not believe at this day that any man in this 
House would wish to revive the relentless, terrible, and horrible 
agonies through which the better man of our colonies passed two 
hundred years ago. We have passed all that; no thanks to the 
Puritan. There is to be no more tearing out of Quaker tongues, 
no more death of supposititious witches, no exile of Baptists. We 
have fixed it as a part of the Constitution, not religious liberty for 
this one or that one, but complete religious or "soul liberty" for 
all, not the mere toleration; not the writ of habeas corpus which 
you have altogether abrogated, not the liberty of print, speech, 
locomotion, or life, but the liberty in which each and every man 
exults, as a sentient being, when untrammeled, he lifts his soul 
in prayer to his Maker and his God. Therefore, I welcome this 
efifigy of Roger Williams to the Capitol. It is a protest against 
intolerance and bigotry. It is an everlasting symbol of religious 
liberty, as fixed in our Constitution, by the practice and example 
of Roger Williams and Rhode Island. Let his form in marble 
ever reproduce in the mind the generous, logical, and noble truths 
of his life of sacrifice and devotion. 



212 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 



THE CHARACTER OF THE PURITAN. 



HON. B. F. BUTLER, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



(Remarks made in the House of Representatives, January nth, 
1872.) 

I listened with great pleasure, Mr. Speaker, to the very able, 
well put, and eulogistic address of the honorable gentleman from 
Rhode Island (Mr. Fames). I agree with every word that he said 
in praise of one of the foremost men of his day, and I am glad 
that while Rhode Island has not preserved a lineament of his face, 
or any correct efBgy of his form, or even the memory of the spot, 
in a State small enough to find it, where his grave is, that at this 
late day her people have placed a statue here as a monument to 
the practical founder of religious liberty. I had thought, Mr. 
Speaker, it were not well even to controvert anything which 
seemed not to do justice to Massachusetts. I looked upon it as a 
finished oration, as a sort of funeral eulogium, in which it is 
always permitted to say all possible good about the dead, even at 
the expense of other dead, or the living, if not too unjust perhaps; 
and, therefore, I saw no sufficient reason why I should interfer'e, 
although in that I may have been mistaken. 

But the remarks my colleague felt himself called on to make, 
which have brought the early founders of Massachusetts somewhat 
in prominence before the House, and what has fallen since from 
the gentleman from New York (Mr. Cox) as to them, seem to 
demand a word of explanation of the Puritan character, which, I 
am certain, the gentleman from New York neither understands 
nor appreciates. 

True it is, sir, the Pilgrims left England for Holland because 
they could not worship God according to the dictates of their 
conscience in their English homes. They went to Holland where 
they had full liberty of conscience, full right to worship God in 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 213 

the form they desired, but where they did not remain, for the 
reason that they could have no control in teaching and bringing 
up their young men and young maidens in their fathers' faith; 
where heresies of all descriptions were, in their view, undermining 
the true practices of the word of God. And for that reason they 
did — what? They sought a new world. For what purpose? For 
the purpose of founding a Church which of itself should be a State, 
which looked to but one ruler, looked to but one superior, looked 
to but one law and but one guide, and that His holy word. As 
the gentleman from New York has said, they hired a captain to 
land them, where I suppose they intended to land, on the island 
of Manhattan, or somewhere in what is now the State of New York, 
which he failed to do. And, Mr. Speaker, may we not pause a 
moment to contemplate what would have been the change in that 
island if they had landed there? (Laughter.) May not we of 
Massachusetts, fishermen as we are, some of us — followers of St. 
Peter, at an humble distance, as we are — may we not point to 
Massachusetts, on the one side, as a specimen of a Puritan Com- 
monwealth, and to the island of Manhattan, on the other, as a 
Commonwealth that I have no words of characterization? 

Now, sir, when our Pilgrim i fathers came to Plymouth for 
this high and noble purpose, what did they do? They gave up the 
refined society of the Old World; nay, more, all the comforts of 
civilization and delights of home and pleasures of country. For 
what? For conscience sake. Why? Because they believed in 
their souls that their religious teachings and doctrines were right 
and all others were wrong. They came to a wilderness and en- 
dured every privation, even the horrors of starvation; they risked 
the attacks of a savage, an unknown foe, extending over the con- 
tinent; they encountered all the horrors of climate, sickness, and 
death itself, for the purpose of founding a commonwealth in which 
they could worship God as they believed was His will according 
to His word. Thus they founded religious liberty in this sense 
only, that they interpreted the Scriptures according to private 
judgment, and not according to the dogma of any church; and 
they asked no man to come to their New World with them who 



214 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

did not believe as they did, and they required no man to stay there 
unless, believing as they did, he chose so to do. They had per- 
iled everything except their souls' salvation to get a place even 
in the wilderness, where they might have the opportunity, in the 
fear of God, of working out that problem of their souls' salvation, 
and all that they asked was not to be interfered with by anybody 
else who should set up false doctrines in their belief. And while 
they welcomed to their new home in the wilderness, founded by 
starvation and privations, everybody, they insisted that everybody 
who came there should not interfere with their religious liberty. 

That was the theory upon which the Puritan Commonwealth 
was founded, as I understand it. Having made these sacrifices, 
having taken these pains to get a Commonwealth in which they 
might carry out their views of God's words; they only asked that 
other men should not. come there and' interfere with them and take 
away their liberty of conscience by teaching false heresies to their 
children. If they had intruded upon any one else's land, if they 
had gone to the Dutch colony in New York, if they had gone to 
the Church of England colony at James River, if they had gone to 
the semi-Catholic colony at Baltimore, if they had interfered with 
the Quaker colony afterward founded in Pennsylvania, if they had 
gone to any colony and undertaken in that colony to set up their 
peculiar doctrine, their peculiar ideas, their peculiar worship, then 
there would have been some ground of complaint; but coming into 
a savage wilderness and setting up their church and their altars 
there they testified by giving up their lives to the sanctity of their 
belief and to their devotion to it; and they simply asked that others 
should not interfere with that which they had purchased at such a 
price. 

Whenever the Puritan character is contemplated in this view, 
everybody, I think, will agree that there is no occasion for sneers, 
no occasion for animadversion, no occasion for complaint, no 
occasion to look upon them otherwise than as they were, sincere, 
earnest, zealous, devout believers and doers of God's word as it 
was given to their understanding, full in the faith that others who 
differed from them were wrong, and acting contrary to God's will; 



IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 215 

they only asked such others to go away from them, and when they 
did not choose to go away from them they put them on one side. 
(Laughter.) 

I claim, as one of the Representatives of Massachusetts, that 
this was their merit, that they were not only troublesome to those 
that interfered with them and their religious belief, and who came 
where they alone had a right to be and the comers had no right 
to be; and the result has been seen. The same clearness of per- 
ception, the same devotion to duty, the same energy in the per- 
formance of that duty, the same self-reliance, the same trust in 
God's providence which brought them to this new world, has 
leavened this whole country with their ideas, until now we have 
in this country, from sea to sea, the Government founded and 
carried on by the Puritan ideas of Massachusetts. The Puritans 
claimed the same right only what we claim and now exercise, and 
a right which this Congress has exercised, not to permit others 
to come into our country and establish their own ideas of Govern- 
ment and their own institutions. If any one doubts this I ask him 
to look at what this Government is now doing to-day near the 
Great Salt Lake in regard to Mormonism, where we are insisting 
that our ideas, our religion, our institutions shall be established 
and maintained, and not the ideas and institutions of others. 

I claim, then, and I wish to impress my view of the Puritan 
character upon the House, that believing they were right, believing 
they were God's chosen people, and acting upon that belief, giving 
up everything on earth to substantiate and enjoy that belief, with 
practical good sense, with clearness of judgment, and with stern- 
ness of purpose upon that belief, they founded their State, and dealt 
with everybody else that interfered with them as their consciences 
and good judgments dictated; and when in after times we see the 
fruits of that action we can pardon the mistakes, if any, which 
they made. 

Sir, I am not here to defend our Puritan fathers; their history 
is their defense; but a still better defense, if one were needed, is 
the result of their acts and the example of their lives, an empire 
greater and more powerful than the sun ever shone upon, with 



216 ELOQUENCE AND REPARTEE 

every man within its borders a free man, with every religion which 
looks to one God, and to His Son, our Saviour, tolerated, per- 
mitted; nay, invited. This is what I claim to be the result which 
sanctions the conduct, illustrates the character, and is the evidence 
of the energy of purpose and the religious teachings of the Puritan 
founders of Massachusetts. 



A PLEA FOR GENERAL AMNESTY. 



HON. GEORGE VICKERS. OF MARYLAND. 



(Conclusion of an address in the United States Senate, January 
15th, 1872.) 
********* 

It has been said that the sublimest word in our language is 
duty, and the most important, responsibility; that the man who has 
conquered a nation is not great until he has conquered himself, for 
true greatness is moral greatness and nobility of spirit; and that 
he who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he 
himself must pass. Let us rise to the moral grandeur of duty and 
responsibility, achieve a victory over our prejudices, over our 
memories of the past — our resentments, and spirit of retaliation — 
rise to the dignity and honor of our station, and to the exalted 
standard of pure and generous patriotism, forgetting ourselves and 
all our conflicts and dififerences in the love we bear to our fellows, 
equal in all the elements of true manhood to ourselves. It was 
said by an eminent historian that the true end of politics is to 
make life easy and a people happy. Let us verify in our history 
to-day this adage of a wise man, and leave no blot upon the history 
of our times by maintaining distinctions among equals. 

You boast of having struck the manacles from the hands of the 
slaves, while you place them upon the mind, the volition, the 



8D-23;8 



IN TflE AMEKICAX C(3NGRESS. 217 

freedom of the whites. Let us act up to the wisdom of statesmen, 
and while you proclaim the liberty of bondmen, pronounce the 
emancipation of our race; withdraw your military from southern 
soil and restore tranquility and order. Suffer not the fleeting and 
unworthy influences of party to weigh down the mighty balances 
of human rights, the immunities of the citizen and the demands of 
the nation; but in view of the humiliations, sufferings, and destruc- 
tion of the past, looking with the prescience and hope of the patriot 
to the stupendous greatness and glories of a happy future, rise to 
the true character of our position, and restore to our people and 
the States equality, justice, confidence, and constitutional rule, 
the secure and solid foundations of free republican institutions. 

Can there be anything in the history of governments and of men 
higher, nobler, sublimer, than a great people, by their Representa- 
tives and Senators, obliterating all traces of proscription, and 
bringing back into a common fellowship, into full communion 
and brotherhood, those who are "bone of our bone and flesh of 
our flesh/' who speak our language, worship the same God, and 
seek to serve the same country? Send, therefore, the white-winged 
messenger of peace, reconciliation, and hope to those, who will 
contribute to our growth, unity and prosperity. 








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